Nov 21 2007
Arctic Sea Ice Returns Fast
I’ve previously posted about the arctic sea ice anomaly, stressing that we should be cautious in interpreting the short-term fluctuations in a clearly noisy dataset. I think it is best to stress the long-term loss of arctic sea ice and not the monthly oscillations.
Now it appears that I was correct in my analysis. There has been an extremely rapid build-up of sea ice in the arctic since the minimum extent was reached about a month and a half ago. Below is the image that Tamino posted that shows the dramatic loss of sea ice.
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If you look at the time series of sea ice extent directly from Cryosphere Today, it shows that the ice that was lost in the summer has largely already returned. It does not appear that the anomaly was anything more than an anomaly. These things happen; see the previous times there was rapid sea ice losses or gains in my previous post linked above.
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The latest sea ice number is marked in red (still hard to see), but it’s pretty much back where it was last year at this time. It’s still well below the 1978-2000 average, but it is nothing as low as it was even a month ago.
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4 Responses to “Arctic Sea Ice Returns Fast”
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This is what the sea ice modelers predict will happen until the Arctic Ocean warms up enough for open water to persist despite the lack of insolation in the winter (which IIRC ought to involve a lag of some decades). IOW even after we initially see a more-or-less ice-free summer, the winter ice will still fill the basin (albeit thinly). What’s of most interest in the current ice behavior is to what extent the summer loss trend will exhibit short-term persistence. In particular, will there be a similarly shar loss next year even if melt conditions are somewhat less favorable (as seems likely).
William Connolley is taking bets on that point (in pounds, so what with the current exchange rate trend the bet amount should exceed my life savings when it comes time to settle up). But I expect to win! William (taking IMHO blatantly unfair advantage of the fact that he does sea ice modeling for a living) notes that two record years in a row is an extreme rarity and that that should remain true even given a sharply declining trend. That’s true, but the circumstance we have is of a record year (2005) followed by a year that came very close to a new record (stopped by a cold snap at the last moment) and then yet another record year. Of course this is the sort of logic people use to talk themselves into losing bets.
The winter arrived and ice formed. WOW what a surprise. New ice is formed every year. The question is persistence. There is a high likelihood that the new ice will not last through several summers and that additional older multi year ice will melt. That is what the graphs show.
Neil; you said:
[The winter arrived and ice formed. WOW what a surprise.]
To me the surprise was the rapid phase change from liquid to solid. That was an extraordinary amount of heat the Arctic Ocean gave up to the atmosphere to achieve the salt water freezing temp. of 28.8 (F)from what may have been, in the West Arctic, a SST five degrees F above normal.
Now, connecting the dots to my backyard in Northern Virginia on this Thanksgiving day; the temp is about 65 and leaves on my trees tell me it is October 15. Some leaves falling slowly but normally they should be decomposing in my compost pile by now.
A connection between rapid Arctic ice freeze and seemingly September weather in my zip code is the far north pull of the jet stream to the Arctic region. That would explain the extremely rapid cold sufficient to freeze the warmer-than-recently-observed West Arctic Ocean.
While I am enjoying this longest fall folliage experience of my 64 years, it worries the heck out of me because there is a price to pay somewhere down the road but I am not able to see that far ahead. I am definintely worried.
And, the National Academy of Science should have the wisdom and foresight to examine the impact of Arctic ice meltback on the western North American grainbasket of the world.
That is what we taxpayers are paying for…answers to profound questions.
What I find fascinating is that as the Artic ice anomaly is less than the average, the Antartic is above the average.
When the Artic sea ice hit record minimum the Antartic hit record maximum.
Nobody comments, it’s as if it didn’t happen!
[Response: That's because it didn't happen! Look here. I'm just eyeballing, but it does not appear even remotely possible that 2007 is significantly different than other SH winters. Also, when there is a positive anomaly in the NH, it's natural to expect a negative anomaly in the SH. That's called "seasons".]