Arctic Ice Minimum Highest Since 2006

By Paul Homewood

 

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/index.html

 

As I suggested last week, the Arctic sea ice extent passed its minimum on 9th September, about a week earlier than normal. NSIDC have provisionally accepted this, while warning that changing winds might put ice flows together.

However, the ice now seems to be growing strongly again, so that scenario is now exceedingly unlikely.

The minimum was logged at 5.079 million sq km, 25,000 sq km  higher than in 2009, and therefore the highest on record since 2006.

 

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/archives.html

 

Sea ice area has also recovered strongly since last year, and is also the highest since 2006. This gives the lie to the claim of thin, slushy ice.

 

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.area.arctic.png

 

We are told that it is only long term trends that matter, but it must be remembered that satellite monitoring of sea ice only began in 1979. Such a short period certainly is not long enough to establish “long term trends”, particularly when the big ocean oscillations work on 60 year cycles.

So let’s just turn the clock back to 1979, and see what conditions were like in the Arctic then.

First a look at the GISS temperatures for that year, compared to a baseline of 1930-50. Almost the whole of the Arctic was significantly colder, much of it by up to 4C.

 

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?year_last=2013&month_last=8&sat=4&sst=3&type=anoms&mean_gen=0112&year1=1979&year2=1979&base1=1930&base2=1950&radius=1200&pol=reg

 

Now, a look at temperatures in Iceland, as provided by the Iceland Met.

 

Figure 2. 7-year running means of temperature at three locations in Iceland, Reykjavík (red trace)), Stykkishólmur (blue trace) og Akureyri (green trace). Kuldakast = cold period. The first of the marked periods was the coldest one in the north (Akureyri), the second one was the coldest in Reykjavík.  

    

The Iceland Met go on to describe these temperature cycles:

 

The 20th century warm period that started in the 1920s ended very abruptly in 1965. It can be divided into three sub-periods, a very warm one to 1942, a colder interval during 1943 to 1952, but it was decisively warm during 1953 to 1964.

The cold period 1965 to 1995 also included a few sub-periods. The so called "sea ice years" 1965 to 1971, a slightly warmer period 1972 till 1978, a very cold interval during 1979 to 1986, but thereafter it became gradually warmer, the last cold year in the sequence being 1995. Since then it has been warm, the warmth culminating in 2002 to 2003.

Dr Jakobsson, Project Manager of the Sea ice Research Unit at the Icelandic Meteorological Office, wrote this report on sea ice conditions during the 20thC.

 

Sea ice off the Icelandic coasts has been recorded for centuries, first by remarks in annals and diaries kept by farmers and officials, and in a more regular manner during the last couple of centuries. In an effort to find a measure of variability from one year to another, an index was developed indicating the severity of sea ice incident during a particular year along the coasts of Iceland. The index refers both to the extent of the Icelandic coastline being visited by sea ice and number of weeks with recorded sea ice during the year.

Figure 4 shows the sea ice index during most of 20th century. During the first two decades heavy sea ice was quite common along the coasts of Iceland, but in the 1920s a drastic change occurred. Sea ice along the coasts of Iceland became an uncommon characteristic and almost a forgotten phenomena around the middle of the century. An abrupt change occurred in the mid-1960s.

Figure 5 shows the distribution of sea ice along the northern coast of Iceland in February 1965. Heavy sea ice distribution occurred almost each year following, but since 1980 widespread and long-lasting sea ice off Iceland took place at rather irregular intervals.

[The quality of the figures referred to is not good enough for reproduction]

  

If you are still in any doubt, take a look at the following graph of GISS Arctic temperatures.

 

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/ZonAnn.Ts+dSST.txt

 

It is clearly a nonsense to consider trends that begin at probably the coldest part of the cycle, without taking into account the rest of the cycle. Such poor science cannot be excused by the fact that satellites were not around prior to then.