Arctic Ice Same in May 1980 as in May 2008 how can that be?

The satellite images were provided by the University of Colorado. Why are they not credible? I am asking. Here are the images. You skeptics tell me why the picture that they show is not relevant or not true. Seems like only yesterday when the satellite images were showing vast shrinkages in ice EXTENT that these were gleefully cited as proof. Now, the images show something different but they are to be discredited because… why?

[quote]Mr Smith,

I believe you are looking at the Surface Area of ice rather than the Volume. It would be an assumption to suggest that a change in surface area is in anyway correlated with a change in the volume.

Can you provide us with any evidence that the volume has remained the same?

Doesn’t your suggestion that polar ice isn’t melting conflict with evidence (not provided by me) of rising sea levels?[/quote]

When the surface extent images were shown, they were jumped upon as proof that global warming and massive melting were occuring in the Arctic. Now, they show something else. Why are they still not relevant? I am showing figures on EXTENT not VOLUME. IF there are figures out there to show that extent does not matter because of volume x, y and z then show us. I am discussing extent and I want to know why this suddenly does not matter. Rising sea levels can also be due to expansion caused by hotter water. How much of it is due to melting ice caps? My understanding was that most of the sea level rises have been localized and that those that are worldwide are due to expansion from higher temperature levels. Regardless, we were up 17 inches in the 20th century and we may be looking to something roughly similar in the 21st though we do not know for sure. And why did sea levels rise mostly during the first half of the 20th century and not the second half when supposedly global warming was to blame and this occurred in the second half?

SCJMA:

The extent is similar. Would that be a better term than the one used in my title “the same?” If so, let’s go with highly similar. Acceptable? Thanks for the figures on concentration which do show that the ice thickness is different but given that the EXTENT was ballyhooed by many global warming advocates to prove this that and the other, now that the ice extent is once again “highly similar” to 1980, who’s to say that eventually the concentration levels will not recover? After all, last year was very very cold and in that one winter a lot of “recovery” was made (2007-8). What is the same thing happens for another two years? Again, my mistake to use “the same” in the title.

Also, I note that you have not disputed the 35 perent increase in Antarctic ice and that there are no challenges to the “concentration” or “volume” in this area. Why not? Should we also have a satellite image here to show how much more of the region is being covered by ice. While ice along the peninsula and in Western Antarctica are melting (shrinking), what about the rest of the continent and what does this mean for global warming theories? I mean if you do want to talk about cherry picking, then this should be discussed as well lest the term now fall on your team, yes?

[quote=“fred smith”][quote]Mr Smith,

I believe you are looking at the Surface Area of ice rather than the Volume. It would be an assumption to suggest that a change in surface area is in anyway correlated with a change in the volume.

Can you provide us with any evidence that the volume has remained the same?

Doesn’t your suggestion that polar ice isn’t melting conflict with evidence (not provided by me) of rising sea levels?[/quote]

When the surface extent images were shown, they were jumped upon as proof that global warming and massive melting were occuring in the Arctic. Now, they show something else. Why are they still not relevant? I am showing figures on EXTENT not VOLUME. IF there are figures out there to show that extent does not matter because of volume x, y and z then show us. I am discussing extent and I want to know why this suddenly does not matter. [/quote]

I agree with your logic here in the first instance. I have no proof of the correlation between extent (surface area) and volume. I, like you am also not convinced of the so called Greenhouse effect.

[quote=“fred smith”]

Rising sea levels can also be due to expansion caused by hotter water. How much of it is due to melting ice caps? My understanding was that most of the sea level rises have been localized and that those that are worldwide are due to expansion from higher temperature levels. Regardless, we were up 17 inches in the 20th century and we may be looking to something roughly similar in the 21st though we do not know for sure. And why did sea levels rise mostly during the first half of the 20th century and not the second half when supposedly global warming was to blame and this occurred in the second half?[/quote]

I don’t think water changes volume with a rise in temperature, although my area of expertise is not Thermodynamics.

How does a sea level rise locally? I would have thought that gravity would pretty much even it out! (Its like the suggestion that water might be higher on one side of the bath compared to the other!)

I think that the reason why there are apparent differences between locations has nothing to do with the sea, but more to do with continental shifts which need to be correlated with each other.

Yes.

Hotter water though expands.

Plate shifts and other local geologic conditions. Yes.

It’s highly similar in the month you have taken for comparison (May). But if you look at the maps I posted for September, the extent is dramatically different. Can the ice recover? Sure, it can as it has in the past. Can it get worse? Yes, that can happen as well. Right now, the ice extent in Sep 2007 is almost down to half of what it was in Sep 1980. Univ of Colorado predicts things won’t be getting any better this year. We’ll know in a few months.

'Cause I haven’t looked into it. It may very well be as you claimed. I haven’t checked.

I didn’t realize I was on a team. I’m not up to date on what’s happening in the Antarctic so I’ll leave the discussions to those more informed.

All this talk about short term fluctuations in temperature, ice extents, etc. is interesting but here’s a paper that puts all of this in greater historical context: Torneträsk tree-ring width and density ad 500–2004: a test of climatic sensitivity and a new 1500-year reconstruction of north Fennoscandian summers

The paper reconstructs historical temperatures based on tree ring width and density of trees in northern Sweden. Based on their research, the earth has indeed been heating up for the past 100 or so years, however, the late 20th century is not the warmest on record. Here’s a quote from their abstract:

The question one would naturally ask is whether previous warm periods were accompanied by an increase in greenhouse gases. If so, what was the mechanism for such an increase? While the current shrinking of the Arctic ice cap bolsters the claim of global warming environmentalists, this latest published research bolsters the claim of those that say even if warming is happening, it ain’t due to humans.

SCMJA:

You may wish to review the latest on the reliability of tree samples. According to the study, regardless of where trees are (frigid or tropic zones), they self-regulate to arrive at the same temperature. So a tree in Miami is 80 degrees as is one in Montreal. Very interesting. Did you not read? This is having a huge impact on how these tree-ring test results are now being viewed. Sorry to deflate that balloon.

No, I did not read. I’d be interested in a link or reference if you can provide one. The tree ring study I quote above agrees quite well with existing proxies that point to a Medieval warm period as well as the Little Ice Age, so I’d be interested to see how this correlation came about if tree ring readings are not reliable.

The link that Fred did not bother to read before commenting on my post…

[quote]Despite the recent announcement that the discharge from some Antarctic glaciers is accelerating, we often hear people remarking that parts of Antarctica are getting colder, and indeed the ice pack in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica has actually been getting bigger. Doesn’t this contradict the calculations that greenhouse gases are warming the globe? Not at all, because a cold Antarctica is just what calculations predict… and have predicted for the past quarter century.

Modelers took a closer look and noticed some complications. As greenhouse gases increase, the heat seeps gradually deeper and deeper into the oceans. But when larger volumes of water are brought into play, they bring a larger heat capacity. Thus as the years passed, the atmospheric warming would increasingly lag behind what would happen if there were no oceans. In 1980 a New York University group reported that “the influence of deep sea thermal storage could delay the full value of temperature increment predicted by equilibrium models by 10 to 20 years” just between 1980 and 2000 A.D. (2)

The delay would not be the same everywhere. After all, the Southern Hemisphere is mostly ocean, whereas land occupies a good part of the Northern Hemisphere. A model constructed by Stephen Schneider and Thompson, highly simplified in modern terms but sophisticated for its time, suggested that the Southern Hemisphere would experience delays decades longer than the Northern. Schneider and Thompson warned that if people compared observations with what would be expected from a simple equilibrium model, “we may still be misled… in the decade A.D. 2000-2010.” (3)

The pioneer climate modelers Kirk Bryan and Syukuro Manabe took up the question with a more detailed model that revealed an additional effect. In the Southern Ocean around Antarctica the mixing of water went deeper than in Northern waters, so more volumes of water were brought into play earlier. In their model, around Antarctica “there is no warming at the sea surface, and even a slight cooling over the 50-year duration of the experiment.” (4) In the twenty years since, computer models have improved by orders of magnitude, but they continue to show that Antarctica cannot be expected to warm up very significantly until long after the rest of the world’s climate is radically changed.

Bottom line: A cold Antarctica and Southern Ocean do not contradict our models of global warming. For a long time the models have predicted just that.[/quote]

realclimate.org/index.php/ar … /#more-529

Interesting. But Antarctica is land not ocean. Does that make any difference?

Also, what are your comments then about the ice extent in the Arctic? Despite the relative thinness of the ice (concentration), the extent is nearly the same as in 1980. When the extent of the ice had retreated, it was ballyhooed by the press that global warming was occurring and that this was responsible. Now, that the ice extent has similar levels, why not big talk about how this proves anything? I want to know why. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Either extent matters or it does not.

the May photos did show a similar extent of sea ice in Arctic waters to that in May 1980, but the June photos show that the ice is melting fster than last year, and the extnet of ice-free sea may well surpass last year’s record levels. it is because the ice is much thinner, much less dense, and has a much higher salinity (it’s recent ice from last winter, rather than thick centuriese old ice pack, and thus melts faster and breaks up more easily).

the extent of sea ice even at the largest level this winter was stll below the 1979-2000 average, by about 3-4% (which is a vast area). the rate and extent of sea ice loss means that there will be an ice-free Arctic ocean in late summer by about 2012-2013, according to latest modelling from data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

whether this is due to warmer trees, global cooling, increased panda farts, or natural variation in sunspot activity is still under investigtion.

I get all that Urodacus BUT when the ice EXTENT started to shrink, this change in EXTENT was trumpeted as proof of global warming. NOW, the EXTENT shows something different and suddenly no one wants to talk about it. They want to talk about CONCENTRATION or EXTENT in other months or MELTING RATES. What gives? If it was good enough proof six months to a year ago, what has changed to make it necessary for EXTENT discussions to now include information on melt rates and concentration levels? Hmmmm?

the extent varies a lot more than the mass of the ice, and is bound to grow every winter. soem years there is a lot of new ice, some years a little. i don’t know whether the ice extent was unusually large or small in 1980, but the trend is still towards increased ice-free reas in summer months. that in itself is alarming, isn’t it?

but then, i don’t really know as i have never been there. not that it would help to visit once, anyway. but still, i have never been there.

How come the very same government organisation says “We had a bit more ice in the winter, although we were still way below the long-term average. So we had a partial recovery; but the real issue is that most of the pack ice has become really thin, and if we have a regular summer now, it can just melt away” How can that be?

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7461707.stm

Why?

And again if EXTENT was such a problem before, why is this similar extent information not being treated as the same important “proof?”

Now, just when you thought that you had heard every ridiculous link to global warming, we are now being told that earthquake intensity has increased because of global warming. I shit you not. Is there no end to the efforts to gain funding off this great evil?

But the article does have some interesting information on sea temperatures which I will quote here as being pertinent to our discussion. Read on…

[quote]We are told the reason we can’t measure any enhanced greenhouse warming is that it is hiding in the deep oceans. So how does a fraction of a degree warming of deep ocean water increase earthquake activity? Moreover, enhanced greenhouse theory demands that the tropical mid-troposphere warms at a rate significantly faster than the surface and yet the observed trend, if real, is a trivial 0.03 K/decade (less than one-third of one degree per century). If there is anything to the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis then AGW must be less than that trend (too small to measure, in other words).

We’ve probably had enough fun at Chalko’s expense but should point out his ‘research’ is based on totally flawed model output from none other than Hansen himself. Remember the infamous “smoking gun” release? In Earth’s Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications Hansen, et al, state: “Our climate model, driven mainly by increasing human-made greenhouse gases and aerosols, among other forcings, calculates that Earth is now absorbing 0.85 ± 0.15 watts per square meter more energy from the Sun than it is emitting to space. This imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of increasing ocean heat content over the past 10 years.” This is the source of Chalko’s “NASA measurements from space confirm that Earth as a whole absorbs at least 0.85 Megawatt per square kilometer more energy from the Sun than it is able to radiate back to space. This ‘thermal imbalance’ means that heat generated in the planetary interior cannot escape and that the planetary interior must overheat. Increase in seismic, tectonic and volcanic activities is an unavoidable consequence of the observed thermal imbalance of the planet” Unfortunately for Tom, they aren’t “NASA measurements from space” but Hansen’s crappy model output and it’s quite wrong. When the “Energy Imbalance” paper was written the model output was a fair wiggle-fit with Willis (2004) and Levitus (2004). Like all happy accidents, however, this good thing came to an end, too. We’ll let Professor Roger Pielke, Sr., do the honors:

The Correction To The Lyman Et Al 2006 Paper Is Available - The correction to the Lyman et al paper “Recent cooling of the upper ocean” is available. It is “Correction to ‘Recent Cooling of the Upper Ocean’” by Josh K. Willis, John M. Lyman, Gregory C. Johnson and John Gilson. While this correction eliminates the cooling that they reported in the 2006 paper, the warming of the 1990s and very early 2000s has not continued. This absence of global ocean warming (which is consistent with the absence of a significant global average sea surface temperature anomaly trend for the last few years) is a challenge to the modelers and to the conclusions of the IPCC with respect to the ability to skillfully predict global warming. Indeed, it appears that with respect to the challenge on Climate Science of A Litmus Test For Global Warming - A Much Overdue Requirement, the models have failed so far. (Climate Science)

Indeed, the alleged +0.85 W/m2 “imbalance” simply has not existed at least since 2002 (when Argo floats began reporting actual ocean temperatures) and in fact current indications are that Earth has had a negative balance since Jan '07 as Earth has dumped heat to space and global temperatures have fallen quite significantly.

Chalko up another stupid “global warming” claim completely without foundation in reality. Here’s a link to the “paper” (Chalko has had a bee in his bonnet about AGW blowing up the Earth for quite some time).

What you need to know: Relative annual energy release from earthquakes, magnitude 6 or greater, 1900-2008 (source)

Hilarious: Ocean temperatures and sea level increases 50 percent higher than previously estimated - New research suggests that ocean temperature and associated sea level increases between 1961 and 2003 were 50 percent larger than estimated in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

The results are reported in the June 19 edition of the journal Nature. An international team of researchers, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory climate scientist Peter Gleckler, compared climate models with improved observations that show sea levels rose by 1.5 millimeters per year in the period from 1961-2003. That equates to an approximately 2½-inch increase in ocean levels in a 42-year span. (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

Ooh! Ooh! Let us get this one: 2.5"/42 years equates to… 2.5/42*100 = ~6"/century. And the average over millennia is thought to be… ~8"/century, meaning the rate 1961-2003 is only three-fourths that expected, right? What do we win?

Sigh… weasel word alert: Climate change ‘could wipe out whales’ - CLIMATE change could help do to whale populations what commercial whaling has not - wipe out an entire species.

Humpback, southern right and minke whale populations could be damaged by a lack of food caused by a change in sea temperatures, according to researchers from the Federal Environment Department.

Data from the department’s Australian Antarctic Division (AAD), published in the Marine and Freshwater Research journal, claimed that if the availability of krill - the main diet for “baleen” whales which filter food from water - deteriorated due to climate change, other species could be wiped out. (The Australian)

It is true the Southern Ocean appears to be cooling a little but it has done so many times in the past, yet the whales are still here and so are the krill on which they feed.

Arctic sea ice melt ‘even faster’ - Arctic sea ice is melting even faster than last year, despite a cold winter. Data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows that the year began with ice covering a larger area than at the beginning of 2007. But now it is down to levels seen last June, at the beginning of a summer that broke records for sea ice loss. Scientists on the project say that much of the ice is so thin that it melts easily, and the Arctic may be ice-free in summer within five to 10 years. (BBC)

We’ll see but at present global sea ice area is pretty average. The northern hemisphere is ‘way down’ and southern hemisphere sea ice is ‘way up’.[/quote]

junkscience.com/

This was fun, too!

[quote]Sea level rise calculator


February, 2008

In these days of claim and counterclaim regarding human-caused global warming (or climate change, if you prefer) there are many things said about melting ice sheets and consequent sea level rise. So much, in fact, that at least part of the population is seriously concerned.

At JunkScience.com we receive so many requests for estimates or verification that we are always on the lookout for useful resources to which we can direct readers.

One item we came across, by engineer Jerome J Schmitt, laid out the calculations for people to see for themselves how much heat is required to melt icecaps and really served as the inspiration for the following calculator. So, with a large tip of the hat to Jerome J Schmitt here is a simple form-based calculator you can use to see for yourself what kind of sea level rises could reasonably be anticipated and what it would take to achieve them.

We’ll present the form in a couple of formats so you can derive the numbers you seek with a minimum of effort. We will also explore a corollary arising as we go along.

Some of our basis numbers will be varied slightly from those used by Schmitt. Don’t worry, these are in the background of the calculator and you are not expected to use them for “back of an envelope” calculations. We provide them only so those that are sufficiently interested can perform check calculations to verify the calculator and everyone can check the underlying assumptions (most available from a wide selection of reference works, links to a sampling of same available in Schmitt’s article linked above).

Using 5.137 x 1018 kg as the mass of the atmosphere (from Trenberth, 1981 JGR 86:5238-46).

Specific heat capacity of air (cp) for temperatures -50 °C to 40 °C = 1.005 kJ/kg.K (for these calculations K and °C are equivalent and the temperature range adequate for the vast bulk of the atmosphere).

From the above two figures, heat required to raise temperature of atmosphere 1 °C = 5.137 x 1018 x 1.005 = 5.162685 x 1018 kJ.

Earth’s surface area (approximately) 5.1 x 108 km2 (converted to meters squared) x 106 = 5.1 x 1014 m2. About 70.8% of Earth’s surface is covered by water, of which a couple percent are fresh water so, about 69% seas and oceans = 3.519 x 1014 m2.

For the purposes of these calculations continents are considered sheer-sided (no ocean area expansion is included as height is increased and thus all rises calculated are necessarily greater than can actually occur in the real world).

The Greenland, East and West Antarctic Ice Shields total 3.45% of Earth’s surface with a combined surface area of about 1.524 x 107 km2. Although central Greenland temperatures are approximately -30 °C and central Antarctica -50 °C no consideration is given to that thermal deficit and heat calculations made on the basis of conversion of ice to water at 0 °C.

The density of water and ice is 1,000kg/m3 (actually ice is less dense, which is why it floats but calculations are performed on the basis of energy required to produce a given amount of melt water). Latent heat of melting for water is 3.34 x 102 kJ/kg.

Ice water does not change temperature with heat transfer until all ice is melted (or water frozen) and so no thermal expansion or contraction allowance is made when calculating sea levels.

While the input to our form is atmospheric heating, obviously energy that heats the atmosphere is unavailable to melt ice unless the atmosphere cools with the energy transfer. For this reason we have a field where you can select what proportion of energy should be devoted to ice melt. If you do not choose to specify then a simple Earth’s surface ice shield proportion of 3.45% will be used by default and the atmospheric temperature will decline if displayed. If you choose 0% for maximum atmospheric temperature transfer then naturally no ice melt calculation will occur so the default 3.45% will again be used. Forms limit the percentage atmospheric heat transferred to ice melt to a maximum 50% (~15 times the actual surface area and a ridiculously high transfer rate).

A few things you may wish to bear in mind before e-mailing to tell us the results must be wrong (because they are not as alarmists have advertised):

The Holocene (the current interglacial period) began warming approximately 12,000 years ago and yet substantial ice caps remain (it takes a long time to transfer sufficient heat to melt that much ice). At least 6 °C over 12,000 years has not been sufficient to eliminate the ice caps despite the fact the sun has been replenishing the number of kJ available to melt ice throughout that period.
The atmosphere is huge despite the silly claims about our “fragile envelope” and the atmosphere has a huge heat capacity. It takes enormous sustained inputs over time to alter its temperature (the IPCC estimate for atmospheric temperature change 1850-2000 is 0.4-0.8 °C).
Moreover, we have taken no account of the huge thermal deficit that exists because the average temperature of the ice caps is not 0 °C but significantly lower (minus 15 and below would be a good average) while only relatively trivial peripheral regions are near melting point. Thus we are dramatically overestimating potential sea level rise from ice melt.

Further, we have ignored lapse rate. If you don’t know what that is you needn’t worry about it but it is easy to look up and we like to think you’ll do so. In a nutshell the lapse rate is the fall in temperature of approximately 6.49 °C/1000m [3.56 °F/1,000’] with altitude up to 11,000m [36,000’]. From 11,000m [36,000’] up to 20,000m [65,000’], the constant temperature is -56.5 °C [-69.7 °F]. The significance of this being that Antarctica has a mean elevation of almost 2,500m, so is about 16 °C cooler than the surface at sea level to begin with while Greenland, too, has significant elevations.

For the purposes of this simple calculator ‘the atmosphere’ and ‘heat’ are treated as uniform discrete entities.

Finally, we ignore energy that would necessarily be devoted to melting sea ice as this has no bearing on sea levels since floating ice has already displaced all the sea water it is going to in solid or liquid form. All melt is assumed to be land-borne ice capable of raising sea levels.

On that basis then, knock yourselves out trying to drown the planet with as much warming as you care to apply (we might suggest, however, that you try the IPCC’s roughly 1.5 - 6.0 °C range [/quote]

Comments?

[quote]Comments?[/quote]You cocked up the equations in your post. Maybe you should read them before you copy and paste other people’s work. The “Preview” button is your friend.

I would not normally bother to respond but where’s the cockup? The report is discussing a report in the BBC about sea ice and questioning it. Just because it makes note of the BBC report, does not mean that the author agrees with it. I generously highlighted the section myself otherwise I doubt that you would have noticed it yourself. That is why he ends in the final paragraph with “let’s see…” I would take that to mean that he is skeptical of the BBC predictions for ice extent in five to 10 years.

My beef is this: Extent was used to prove global warming; now we see that extent is back up in May to 11 million or so. Extent is now similar to what it was in May 1980 despite 28 years of global warming (cough cough) What does that mean? And why does it appear that extent no longer matters? It used to. I was used to prove all sorts of global warming. Now, we cannot talk about extent. We have to look at concentration or we have to look only at late summer figures when the ice melt is at is greatest extent. Why is that? Would that represent cherry-picking of facts and figures?

Ahhhhhhh… Now, do you get my point? You may wish to return to the Open Forum. This might be a bit too challenging for you… Just a thought…

Be sure and make some funny remark before you go though. It is important to remind us that at the very minimum… at least, you are funny, right?

What would be the point in correcting your numbers? You have no interest in numbers or getting scientific facts correct. You don’t want to discuss it outside your little clique, and you consider me too inferior to even consider anything I want to say, even though it’s clear others have a better understanding of what you’re talking. You just here to belittle others. So why do you come here if you have nothing positive to say?

Go on then, belittle and attack me personally, that’s what you do, isn’t it?