No - not me, Stephen!! I'm a geologist by trade, although I would like to extend my communication of science work into climate, having delved deep into the literature and discussed things with some of the lads & lasses who are doing the research.

The reason for yesterday's bad post, which I apologise for, was that the "Black Dog" had me. I'd gone to the pub frustrated at a job application being turned down - after an interview I felt went excellently. On arrival I learned of the unexpected death of a friend - the second such bombshell in a week. That kinda mixes up to get you feeling mad about the world in general!

Anyway this is OT but I just wanted to explain.

Back to the Arctic :)

Cheers - John

Sorry for your woes John, i think everyone of us sympathises with all your losses.

As for the ice , even I had it through the 8 million level by the 28th (I think I posted somewhere) and ,as you might guess, I'm generally on the low side where ice is concerned!

That said we surely must ask questions as to this month's ice growth?

Curious but on the 30%+.....

And then you get this off the WUWT page....

From: Walt Meier
To: Anthony
Subject: Re: you might have a problem
Sent: Oct 29, 2010 8:42 AM

Hi Anthony,

Thanks for the heads up. I looked at it and it doesn’t look like there
is any problem.

As we went through before with Steve [Goddard], looking at the images can be
misleading because they’re not on an equal area projection. There is
more ice in the central Arctic this year, but less in the Beaufort Sea,
Canadian Archipelago, and Baffin Bay. These areas roughly balance each
other out.

I also recall Cryosphere Today having an issue of changing their images,
so I don’t know if you can consistently compare them anyway – it looks
like their 2007 image is missing some ice. Attached is our concentration
images from 2007 and yesterday and there doesn’t look like much
discrepancy (apologies for the different image sizes).

walt

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I fixed the size differences, and here they are:

Of course we don’t have the daily extent data from NSIDC, since they so far have refused to publish it (they do give monthly though) so, we have to be content with image comparison rather than data comparison with NSIDC.

=======================================

Walt, as I said before, you really should publish the daily data. Consider how this looks: NSIDC director Serreze screams “death spiral” to the media while at the same time holds back publicly funded data. It is the same sort of bull-headedness that got CRU in deep trouble.  – Anthony

UPDATE: Reader Lee Kington provides this blink comparator version:

Thanks for that Rob! Helps with my little mind (esp. the blink comparison?)

As for why we seem to be failing in our ice growth?

 Any suggestions anyone?

Maybe it's Stephen's warm water from the last El Nino, or was it the last but one, or the one before that?

Someone remind me why Rob keeps using 2007 as the reference point....?

And of course it is much easier to confuse the issue with pictures, whilst the raw data makes the position absolutely clear - as I have been posting on a regular basis recently.

In summary, at end of October:

• The 1979-2000 average is 10.3 million sq km


• The average for 2002 to 2009 is 8.6 million sq km


• We are currently short of 8.0 million, the second lowest value for this date behdin 2007

We won't delve back into ice thickness and the age of the ice for now.

Suffice to say that those maps provide a misleadingly gentle view of what is occurring.

The 1979-2000 is meaningless. All it shows us is that today we have less Ice then the 70's and 80's, but as to the reality of how much Ice there should be, it means nothing......

Well, you can see here how much more ice there was in the 30's (during the last' warming')

('Philips' Handy volume, 1930)

I didn't realise that in depression hit 1930s we had satellites looking down, or hundreds of surveyors deployed to measure the ice extent.
It will be a vague approximation - very interesting nonetheless.

I'm sceptical the ice was often in such widespread and firm contact with Iceland for example.
Perhaps this is supposed to show anecdotal maximum extents in living memory at that time?
Could it even be intended to show areas where ice should be expected as a frequent shipping hazard?
I don't think it's safe to compare it with recent 15%/30% maps

Well, if I was losing an argument that is what I would say as well....

Time will tell if your complacency or my grave concern are misplaced.

I'm amazed we made it through the century we seem so low tech.....I wonder how many ocean voyages there were back in the dark of the 1930's (before air travel was common place) and why the heck they logged such things as 'permanent ice' and 'Ice Bergs' etc 4WD?

Thanks GW, that is a very interesting and informative piece.  I found the map showing 1930 ice extent particularly fascinating - I was not aware that the ice extended so far, to the northern half of Iceland and around the coast of Newfoundland.

I have been looking for other supporting evidence, lest there be (further) sceptical observations challenging the general validity of the information.

As I was not aware of the extent of ice off Newfoundland I checked and found this:

http://www.socc.ca/cms/en/socc/seaIce/pastSeaIce.aspx

Again you can see the decline although the chart misses out the last decade, when the declines have been sharper generally.

I'm not being sceptical of it's validity, but what is it actually showing?
Newfoundland also seems to be encased in ice.

Hi Four,

I'm not sure what measure of sea ice the map shows.  The narrative - even recent narrative - refers to pack ice moving down the coast of Newfoundland on the Labrador current each winter and receding north around April time.  I cannot find anything more definitive at the moment although the graph suggests a decline.

Hazardous ice floes yes, but I don't see it can be showing more or less solid sea ice to that extent.

I don't thiink 'ice floes' and 'pack ice' are the same thing at all.  If the reference was to 'ice floes' I would agree with you.

My understanding of 'pack ice' is that it is fairly solid ice. Ice floes are areas of ice in open water.

When I was a child I ate dirt, but still survived to experience this entertaining thread
Sorry, off topic.

LOL.  I hadn't appreciated fully the entertainment content....

Back on topic, we finally broke through the 8m sq km level yesterday: 8,075,000.

Hi Doc

The normal rate of recovery for the last week of October is around 550k sq km (1979-2000).  The best since 2002 was 1.0m in 2007 - but related to the very low minimum that year.  We have managed 524k this year, putting it close to 'normal'

Interestingly 2002 and 2003 added 200k and 150k respectively.

The last two days have seen the highest growth for the last two days of October since the daily records are available in 2002.

Thanks for those stats.

I guess 2002 and 2003 started from a higher baseline and the "easier" (more southern) areas had already frozen up and hence the lower freezing rate in those years.

On the subject of Arctic Ice (which I guess all this thread is ) it's nice to see Barrow with its wintry overcoat on.

http://dw.sfos.uaf.edu/sizonet/ice/barrow/ABCam.jpg

I don't think it's quite continuous with the Arctic basin ice just yet but it shouldn't be too long.

Yup Dr M. , sure is good it gets cold when the sun goes down......

I didn't say it was unusual just nice to look at.  It's probably later than usual (I haven't checked) I just thought the link belonged in here rather than elsewhere.

A significant recovery yesterday - an increase of 166k sq km to 8,241k.

Still the 2nd lowest after 2007 for this date (since 2002), but growing at a decent rate finally.

The normal rate of increase is around 60-70k per day at this stage in the cycle.