Edited by user 26 February 2011 16:18:06(UTC) | Reason: Not specified
What is the average life span of an inuit compared to the 1000-2000 years context of arctic sea ice extent which is what we need to judge the recent decline with?
So stories don't get handed down from generation to generation? Sorry I must have made a mistake.
True AIMSIR, but neither are Stephen's musings - which was the point to which I was responding.
A big loss of ice extent yesterday - the biggest since September, just at the end of the melt season.
It certainly doesn't look good.Gandalf.I'm glad I don't have shares in Arctic Sea Ice.
Edited by user 26 February 2011 20:20:41(UTC) | Reason: Not specified
No it doesn't. I've just started a new thread with a link to an excellent article describing the changes occurring in the Arctic and it makes for sober reading. Hopefully at some stage we will move from petty bickering in this Forum about the causes and onto what we can do to mitigate the effects.
Now, if there was a market in Arctic Ice that would also be in meltdown.....
Edited by user 27 February 2011 04:29:24(UTC) | Reason: Not specified
Another late winter day of stunning gains.........not
I think it's 'over'
MODIS will show well any 'collapse and spread' of fragmented ice at the periphery of the pack and we are still 8 weeks away from 'visible' inspection of the central pack... not happy ,not happy at all!
Well, a small gain on the revised figures but we are still left with a small net loss over the last week.
Nearing the peak in the cycle now - in the last decade we have seldom exceeded the levels of the end of February by very much more than 100k - except last year.
What is also worrying is that this low maximum is on the back of a La Nina and solar minimum, both of which should have kept ice levels up. I wonder what would have happened had the opposites been in place?
Hi Scott,
That's a very difficult subject because the sceptics, such as Stephen, will assert that there is a long time lag between ENSO cycles and the effect on the ice. We had a long but inconclusive debate about that not so long ago. Stephen has repeated today in another thread his views on the 30-year Pacific Ocean cycle and thinks the heat from this is still 'in the system' although stating that we are 4-5 years past the peak. It's an unwinnable argument until we have lost a lot more of the summer sea ice - at which point his argument will have been lost.
More ice melts from below than from above so you would expect the weak solar output to have rather less effect than water temperature. On the other hand the open expanse of water and associated heat affecting the lower atmosphere and delaying the re-freeze is a factor.
You might want to have a quick look at the other Arctic thread that I started - the graphs and snapshots of the ice show very clear and marked trends.
As for the current position, we are in that dying phase of the freeze now, with daily losses and gains: 5 of the last 10 days have seen reductions and we have only added 300k since the end of January, the lowest amount in the last decade and almost 200k less than the 1979-2000 norm.
"The heat loss from a newly-opened lead can be so violent (more than 1000 W m-2) ..." and "... what about the areas, now bereft of all ice come early winter, pumping that kind of energy out???"
"I am so very sorry for those holding out hopes of recovery, I know what it is to hope beyond hope, but we must accept our new reality and move forwards?"
Well precisely! Where does all this heat energy go? Much of it into the atmosphere; some of it out of the atmosphere. It all came from the ocean.
So what's this "new reality" you talk about? The oceans are losing heat, the atmosphere is gaining heat, the arctic sea ice sheet is melting. Is it not redistribution of heat between the three main elements of the Climate System - ocean/atmosphere/cryosphere? Same as it ever was.
So, you idea is weather just changes, massive changes involving the disappearance of millions of square miles of ice - it's all just the swings and roundabouts of our atmosphere? Such changes can be waved away with a 'same as it ever was'? Are you joking, Marcus? Do you know nothing about 'forcings'?
It may have been mentioned before but it was pretty clear from Bruce Parry's recent Arctic series the extent and impact of changes in the region - and this was from the people who lived there and had followed the same traditions for generation after generation.
When and where to find food and the patterns of nature are essential knowledge to these people, if they are saying things are changing dramatically, then you can be damn sure that they are.
It appears (atm) the heat 'pushes' the forming cold down into lower latitudes delaying both ice growth and ice thickening. The displaced airs then draw WAA into the basin leading to re-freeze/thickening issues in other areas of the basin.
I believe that this is the first 'melt season' with all the ice less than 5 years old so we will see how this impacts ice extent this time around. Some of the more Skeptical folk have now started talking of 07 in terms of it just being a high melt year and not driven by both thin ice and a 'perfect storm'. The studies then showed the perfect storm synoptics appearing every 7 to 20 years with the 2 before 07'being only 7 years apart. Before 2020 we will see another such summer but I'll wager we are seasonal via 'average summers' before then. this will be down to the forcings that have left us with the pack we see this summer season.
As Mark Serezze advised me some ways of looking at it are far too simplistic.
Warm moist air into cold polar night air = fog. Low level clouds/fog 'trap' heat.
So what's this "new reality" you talk about? The oceans are losing heat, the atmosphere is gaining heat, the arctic sea ice sheet is melt ing. Is it not redistribution of heat between the three main elements of the Climate System - ocean/atmosphere/cryosphere? Same as it ever was.
I make porridge in a pan on a very low heat. If I put a lid on it boils over, if I don't it hardly boils - how much of the heat escaping from the porridge determins if it boils over or if it hardly gets hot.
You (and all the rest of the people who simply wont have it that our actions are involved in Arctic sea ice changes) would say the temperature of the porridge is caused by the temperature of the porridge...
Edited by user 01 March 2011 10:20:07(UTC) | Reason: Not specified
That's completely wrong Stephen and a moment's reflection would tell you that.
There is additional energy being lost from the open water because there is more energy in the water. That is the balance which the system is attempting to restore. What you fail to grasp is that this energy is responsible for the continuing loss of ice thickness and area, coupled with the higher air temperatures.
So, we have heat from the open oceans escaping into the lower atmosphere and we have potentially altered circulation patterns in the Arctic as a consequence driving cold air into mid-latitudes in early winter, leaving less cold air in the Arctic area, resulting in less freezing and therefore more scope for ice loss.