Arctic Sea Ice Extent, Area, and Volume

[Mallow]

El Niño is not associated with reduced Arctic sea ice in general. Indeed, over the Barents and Kara Seas region, based upon my own research, enhanced central Pacific equatorial convection is associated with reduced temperatures and increased sea ice. The effects of ENSO on Arctic sea ice vary from region to region, and I am unaware of any recent study that shows (in observations) that there is a strong correlation between ENSO and overall Arctic sea ice.

As for the statement "there is nothing unusual about our current climate," if one is comparing our current climate to that of recent centuries, one could not be further from the truth. But that point has been rehashed repeatedly and can be easily researched with a small bit of time and effort.

[ORH_wxman]

41 minutes ago, Mallow said:

El Niño is not associated with reduced Arctic sea ice in general. Indeed, over the Barents and Kara Seas region, based upon my own research, enhanced central Pacific equatorial convection is associated with reduced temperatures and increased sea ice. The effects of ENSO on Arctic sea ice vary from region to region, and I am unaware of any recent study that shows (in observations) that there is a strong correlation between ENSO and overall Arctic sea ice.

As for the statement "there is nothing unusual about our current climate," if one is comparing our current climate to that of recent centuries, one could not be further from the truth. But that point has been rehashed repeatedly and can be easily researched with a small bit of time and effort.

Yeah, in all my reading, I've never come across any big correlations for ENSO to sea ice. There's been some regional effects at times as you noted. There was a paper I also read a while back that linked increased subsurface flow from the Bering sea into the Chukchi during El Nino events which may produce lower sea ice in that region...but the overall effect on the arctic as a whole is pretty weak.

[pazzo83]

1 hour ago, blizzard1024 said:

The AMO has been in the warm phase since the late 1990s so little by little sea ice coverage shrinks. Then this year we had a strong El Nino and hence a low sea ice year. We only have about 40 years worth of reliable sea ice coverage data and the satellite monitoring began during a known cool period in the 20th century when sea ice likely was at a maximum in coverage. So we are seeing the downward trend of a cyclical process.  And the Vize, Russia observation is just weather, not climate. There has been tremendous cold in Asia this fall. The average global temperature from the satellites is around +.4C which is not that big of a deal and we are in a cooling trend as the effects of the strong El Nino fade. There is nothing unusual about our current climate.  CO2 may be leadling to some of the observed warming but climate scientists, in my opinion, underestimate the natural variability of our climate system.   

 

 

We have enough data on sea ice to know that its current status is anomalous - even compared to the prior warm phase AMO period in the mid 20th Century.

[Blizzard92]

2 hours ago, blizzard1024 said:

The AMO has been in the warm phase since the late 1990s so little by little sea ice coverage shrinks. Then this year we had a strong El Nino and hence a low sea ice year. We only have about 40 years worth of reliable sea ice coverage data and the satellite monitoring began during a known cool period in the 20th century when sea ice likely was at a maximum in coverage. So we are seeing the downward trend of a cyclical process.  And the Vize, Russia observation is just weather, not climate. There has been tremendous cold in Asia this fall. The average global temperature from the satellites is around +.4C which is not that big of a deal and we are in a cooling trend as the effects of the strong El Nino fade. There is nothing unusual about our current climate.  CO2 may be leadling to some of the observed warming but climate scientists, in my opinion, underestimate the natural variability of our climate system.   

 

 

This is just not true. Most of us studying sea ice - atmospheric interactions spend the majority of our time trying to understand and quantify natural climate variability in the context of a long-term record. There is a plethora of peer-reviewed work to showcase the current/recent sea ice anomalies are particularly unusual.

[blizzard1024]

3 hours ago, Blizzard92 said:

This is just not true. Most of us studying sea ice - atmospheric interactions spend the majority of our time trying to understand and quantify natural climate variability in the context of a long-term record. There is a plethora of peer-reviewed work to showcase the current/recent sea ice anomalies are particularly unusual.

I respect your opinion and appreciate your polite response. The biggest confusion in my mind and others with my viewpoint is how can the Arctic have warm temperatures in the 1930s similar to today's and yet the sea ice does not response and drop. This is counter intuitive. See

 

With falling Arctic temperatures between the 1930s and 1970s, sea ice minimums in the summer time frame are falling. This does not make any sense. Please advise. I am all ears...

[blizzard1024]

3 hours ago, Blizzard92 said:

This is just not true. Most of us studying sea ice - atmospheric interactions spend the majority of our time trying to understand and quantify natural climate variability in the context of a long-term record. There is a plethora of peer-reviewed work to showcase the current/recent sea ice anomalies are particularly unusual.

I respect your opinion and appreciate your polite response. The biggest confusion in my mind and others with my viewpoint is how can the Arctic have warm temperatures in the 1930s similar to today's and yet the sea ice does not response and drop. This is counter intuitive. See

 

With falling Arctic temperatures between the 1930s and 1970s, sea ice minimums in the summer time frame are falling. This does not make any sense. Please advise. I am all ears...

[Blizzard92]

There are numerous studies (older and more recent) that detail the Arctic warming in the early 20th century:

i.e., Delworth and Knutson, [2000], Bengtsson et al. [2004], Serreze and Francis, [2006]

There is also a fairly nice and concise overview from Skeptical Science.

Changes in sea ice are driven by far more than surface temperature. For example, a significant portion of 2016's melt season was forced by bottom melt and increased SST/oceanic heat. 

[blizzard1024]

22 hours ago, Mallow said:

El Niño is not associated with reduced Arctic sea ice in general. Indeed, over the Barents and Kara Seas region, based upon my own research, enhanced central Pacific equatorial convection is associated with reduced temperatures and increased sea ice. The effects of ENSO on Arctic sea ice vary from region to region, and I am unaware of any recent study that shows (in observations) that there is a strong correlation between ENSO and overall Arctic sea ice.

As for the statement "there is nothing unusual about our current climate," if one is comparing our current climate to that of recent centuries, one could not be further from the truth. But that point has been rehashed repeatedly and can be easily researched with a small bit of time and effort.

Strong El Nino's warm the planet, this leads to a warmer Arctic. A warmer Arctic winter leads to less sea ice volume which makes it more susceptible to melt. Lingering planetary warmth leads to a slow recovery this fall. If we didn't have the strong el nino that peaked last winter/early spring I doubt the sea ice would have been so low in the winter-spring time frame and recovery slow this fall.   

Also the Little Ice Age peaked between 1600 and 1800 roughly so we have warmed out of this in the 1900s. The 20th century and early 21st century are not out of the bounds of the last several thousand years based on paleo data. So that is why I state that there is nothing unusual about today's climate. The Holocene climatic "optimum" was warmer than today based on pollen samples from cores 6000-8000 years ago. That is pretty well accepted. So again it has been warmer in the present Holocene so we are within the bounds of the climate of this most recent interglacial.   

 

 

[blizzard1024]

16 hours ago, Blizzard92 said:

There are numerous studies (older and more recent) that detail the Arctic warming in the early 20th century:

i.e., Delworth and Knutson, [2000], Bengtsson et al. [2004], Serreze and Francis, [2006]

There is also a fairly nice and concise overview from Skeptical Science.

Changes in sea ice are driven by far more than surface temperature. For example, a significant portion of 2016's melt season was forced by bottom melt and increased SST/oceanic heat. 

I am very skeptical of any climate model for this problem which all of these studies rely on.   Bengtsson et al. [2004] states "This study suggests that natural variability is a likely cause, with reduced sea ice cover being crucial for the warming."  But the data does not show this. You can't have it both ways. Either sea ice was amazingly steady in the Arctic despite warmer temperatures in the 1930s and then started falling when the temperatures fell from the 1950s to 1970s or indeed as  Bengtsson et al. [2004] suggest sea ice was lower in the 1930s which makes more sense suggesting that sea ice is cyclical in coverage based on arctic temperatures and ocean temperatures (as the AMO would suggest)...

[blizzard1024]

16 hours ago, Blizzard92 said:

There are numerous studies (older and more recent) that detail the Arctic warming in the early 20th century:

i.e., Delworth and Knutson, [2000], Bengtsson et al. [2004], Serreze and Francis, [2006]

There is also a fairly nice and concise overview from Skeptical Science.

Changes in sea ice are driven by far more than surface temperature. For example, a significant portion of 2016's melt season was forced by bottom melt and increased SST/oceanic heat. 

One more thing on Skeptical Science, they use the heavily warm-biased GISS temp dataset and then match it to a reanalysis data to reconstruct Arctic temperatures. Reanalysis data for the Arctic has been shown to unreliable for long term temperature trends...  see   https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/era40

Hence no real conclusions can be made with the present arctic warmth vs the 1930s.... 

[chubbs]

Here is Hadcrut 70-90N with a requirement that 25% of the grids have valid data. 

 

 

[chubbs]

Here is hadcrut 70-90N infilled per cowtan+way

[blizzard1024]

1 hour ago, chubbs said:

Here is hadcrut 70-90N infilled per cowtan+way

Infilled data has a lot of problems.... see climate etc. blog. Plus before 1930 the variability doesn't look right....it changes to less inter annual variability. Something doesn't look right here in my opinion.... 

[ORH_wxman]

I do not agree with the graph that shows very little variability in the sea ice in the 1930s-1950s period. I had already made a post on this further back in the thread, but there is literature that supports higher variability in the sea ice during that time...there's compelling evidence that we had minimums similar to the 1980s and at least early 1990s for many of those years. We will never know for sure though...we have poor data in the Beaufort region from that period.

 

That said, I disagree with blizzard1024 that the warmth now is similar to the 1940s...we've surpassed it recently...it was more similar to the warmth about 15 years ago in the arctic. There may be some localized regions (particularly in the North Atlantic sectors) where the 1940s had similar warmth to today, but not the arctic region as a whole.

[chubbs]

1 minute ago, ORH_wxman said:

I do not agree with the graph that shows very little variability in the sea ice in the 1930s-1950s period. I had already made a post on this further back in the thread, but there is literature that supports higher variability in the sea ice during that time...there's compelling evidence that we had minimums similar to the 1980s and at least early 1990s for many of those years. We will never know for sure though...we have poor data in the Beaufort region from that period.

 

That said, I disagree with blizzard1024 that the warmth now is similar to the 1940s...we've surpassed it recently...it was more similar to the warmth about 15 years ago in the arctic. There may be some localized regions (particularly in the North Atlantic sectors) where the 1940s had similar warmth to today, but not the arctic region as a whole.

I don't buy the pre-1940 infilled data either. There just isn't enough data available. My main point is that you can't use Hadcrut to support an argument that the 1930s were as warm as present because HADCRUT doesn't have enough 1930s data coverage. Even now 70-90N coverage is not much more than 50% and the infilled series shows that the data void areas are likely to be warming the most. 

[blizzard1024]

1 hour ago, ORH_wxman said:

I do not agree with the graph that shows very little variability in the sea ice in the 1930s-1950s period. I had already made a post on this further back in the thread, but there is literature that supports higher variability in the sea ice during that time...there's compelling evidence that we had minimums similar to the 1980s and at least early 1990s for many of those years. We will never know for sure though...we have poor data in the Beaufort region from that period.

 

That said, I disagree with blizzard1024 that the warmth now is similar to the 1940s...we've surpassed it recently...it was more similar to the warmth about 15 years ago in the arctic. There may be some localized regions (particularly in the North Atlantic sectors) where the 1940s had similar warmth to today, but not the arctic region as a whole.

Appreciate your polite response. Can you show me where you are finding this temperature data for the Arctic pre-1950s? If you have done this on another thread I apologize. I am just curious because like ocean SSTs in the far regions of the world, I have a hard time comparing such old data in the Arctic versus the more comprehensive data of today. Below is the Hadcrut Arctic temperatures I posted.  It shows that the Arctic is a little warmer now than in the 1940s but not by much, not enough to decimate the sea ice. Of course this is the HADCRUT dataset which does have its biases...

 

[Mallow]

13 hours ago, blizzard1024 said:

Strong El Nino's warm the planet, this leads to a warmer Arctic. A warmer Arctic winter leads to less sea ice volume which makes it more susceptible to melt. Lingering planetary warmth leads to a slow recovery this fall. If we didn't have the strong el nino that peaked last winter/early spring I doubt the sea ice would have been so low in the winter-spring time frame and recovery slow this fall.   

Again, please show me the observational studies or data which suggest that El Niños are strongly correlated to low Arctic sea ice. I am not aware of such a linkage. Warmer global temperatures during El Niño are mostly associated with elevated SSTs in the tropics and midlatitudes (especially the tropics). As far as I am aware, there is not a strong correlation between ENSO and overall Arctic sea ice.

Indeed, a cursory glance shows that some of the strongest El Niño events in recent record (1982-1983 and 1997-1998) were not followed by particularly anomalous Arctic sea ice minima (1983 was near or even slightly above the average of the time, and 1998 was below the average of the time, but not remarkably so). Other moderate El Niño events such as 1986-1987, 1987-1988, and 1991-1992, were followed by anomalously high Arctic sea ice minima for their time. Furthermore, the extremely anomalous 2012 sea ice minimum record was preceded not by an El Niño, but by a La Niña.

[so_whats_happening]

10 hours ago, blizzard1024 said:

Appreciate your polite response. Can you show me where you are finding this temperature data for the Arctic pre-1950s? If you have done this on another thread I apologize. I am just curious because like ocean SSTs in the far regions of the world, I have a hard time comparing such old data in the Arctic versus the more comprehensive data of today. Below is the Hadcrut Arctic temperatures I posted.  It shows that the Arctic is a little warmer now than in the 1940s but not by much, not enough to decimate the sea ice. Of course this is the HADCRUT dataset which does have its biases...

 

So just by taking a quick glance while from your data being presented yes it looks as though the temps are fairly close 1940's but what seems interesting is that this temperature anomaly has been steady since what looks like 2007 timeframe.

 

[pazzo83]

Welp

 

And along the Arctic Coast in AK

 

[donsutherland1]

43 minutes ago, pazzo83 said:

Welp

 

And along the Arctic Coast in AK

 

What has been going on in the Arctic is nothing short of historic, at least as far as sea ice extent record keeping is concerned.

The October 1-December 9 mean figure for sea ice extent is 7,483,994 square kilometers. The previous record from 2012 was 7,760,443 square kilometers. Moreover, if one took the daily record low minimum figures for the same period of time prior to 2016, the mean figure would be 7,665,564 square kilometers. 

So far, 2016 has seen daily record low figures established on 180 days. It is now all but certain that 2016 will have established record low figures on at least half the days.

 

[pazzo83]

This unprecedented warmth in the Arctic just continues and continues.  Vize Island, Russia (which is at about 80º N latitude) has yet to dip below 0ºF.  It's avg HIGH for December is -5ºF.

[csnavywx]

Ice pack is still getting the crap kicked out of it at the solstice. DMI 80N temps and overall Arctic temps on (yet) another surge and the Kara/Franz Joseph Island area is yet again losing ground. I think we've broken -900 FDD anomaly for the 80N region (not sure on the 66N+), but that's only 175 above ALL of last winter's record total and it's still December. If this keeps up, both the Pacific and Atlantic ice fronts aren't going to put up much resistance this spring. There just isn't going to be enough quality freezing days to build up a good pack at this rate.

[pazzo83]

Buoy close to the North Pole reported a surface temp of 0.4C at 1300UTC today:

Ice is getting slaughtered in this general vicinity:

 

[donsutherland1]

2 hours ago, pazzo83 said:

Buoy close to the North Pole reported a surface temp of 0.4C at 1300UTC today:

Ice is getting slaughtered in this general vicinity:

 

That's extraordinary warmth.

[csnavywx]

93k loss over the past 2 days on Jaxa, similar on NSIDC. Remarkable losses and extraordinary temps on DMI -- yet again. We're getting close to January -- about halfway there. If the rest of this winter goes about the same as the first half, the pack will be in no condition to take punishment in the next melt season.

[donsutherland1]

7 hours ago, csnavywx said:

93k loss over the past 2 days on Jaxa, similar on NSIDC. Remarkable losses and extraordinary temps on DMI -- yet again. We're getting close to January -- about halfway there. If the rest of this winter goes about the same as the first half, the pack will be in no condition to take punishment in the next melt season.

And this is the second such case since November. 

[Snow_Miser]

 

[csnavywx]

The Chukchi is finally closing. However, another monster ridge in the medium range on the OPs and Ensembles could put that in jeopardy. Amazing how little progress this freezing season has had. Coming up on January and the basin is still struggling to freeze or stay frozen.

[donsutherland1]

2016 was a remarkable year as far as Arctic sea ice extent was concerned. A summary of data is below:

[pazzo83]

Some good data from one of our own:

It's kind of insane that over half of the days of 2016 set daily records for low sea ice.  I mean, can you imagine if there were a particular station that recorded daily record highs for 200 days of a particular year?  Alarm bells would be blaring far and wide...

Also, I found this graph PARTICULARLY troubling (from Svalbard, Norway):