But The Ice Is Getting Thicker, Mr Shukman!
By Paul Homewood
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32553668
As part of their propaganda drive for Paris, the BBC’s “Science” Editor has taken a fossil fuel powered trip to the Arctic, to call in on a fossil fuel powered Norwegian scientific expedition, which is measuring and monitoring Arctic ice.
The expedition ship has been escorted into the ice pack by an icebreaker, the KV Svalbard, which will no doubt help to break up the ice a little bit more!
Shukman reports:
Changes in the Arctic Ocean are so profound that the region is entering what amounts to "a new era", according to Norwegian scientists.
A switch from a permanent cover of thick ice to a new state where thinner ice vanishes in the summer will have far-reaching implications, they say.
The Norwegian Polar Institute has been mounting an expedition to the Arctic Ocean during the year’s coldest months.
Scientists have to brave extreme temperatures and total darkness.
Their aim is to gather data on the condition of the ice as it freezes during the polar winter.
A research vessel, the Lance, has been deployed to an area about 500 miles from the North Pole and allowed to drift with the pack-ice.
The director of the institute, Jan-Gunnar Winther, said that measuring what happens in the winter was vital to improving scenarios for future climate change.
A major focus of the expedition is to examine the consequences of having less so-called multi-year ice and a greater proportion of younger ice
We have almost no data from the Arctic Ocean in winter – with few exceptions – so this information is very important to be able understand the processes when the ice is freezing in early winter and we’ll also stay here when it melts in the summer," he explained.
"A new era has entered, we are going from old ice to young ice, thinner ice and the climate models used today have not captured this new regime or ice situation.
"So knowing how it is today can improve climate models which again improve the projection for global climate change."
A major focus of the expedition is to examine the consequences of the Arctic Ocean having less of the so-called multi-year ice – older, tougher floes which have survived for several years – and a greater proportion of younger ice which is thinner.
Apparently, nobody has told them that multi year ice has been steadily building back up for the last few years, and now stands at the highest level since the winter of 2007, before much of it was swept out of the Arctic basin in 2007 and 2008.
Volume too has been growing rapidly and is back to 2006 levels.
Note, particularly, the big increase in 3-year ice this winter, converted from last year’s 2-year ice.
ftp://ccar.colorado.edu/pub/tschudi/iceage/gifs/
Multi year ice, by definition, takes a long time to build back up, and nobody knows what might happen to it this summer.
But what is indisputable is that, currently, it is on the increase again and not declining.
Footnote
You can check out on the stills below how, progressively, how 1-year ice turned into 2-year, then into 3-year and so on.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Thank you for the stills. Those animations make it hard to carefully examine the differences between years.
The BBC does some things really well, such as the Dawn Chorus programme on BBC Four at the moment. However they really should steer clear of climate change propaganda.
Well, this seems to be the main subject of those days, since I’ve just read another few articles on this topic. Thickening ice – that’s a good news, but I think that it’s also important to take a look in the past and see what caused the Arctic warming: http://www.arctic-warming.com/?page_id=50.
Goodie: great news that it is getting much colder and we will have another Little Ice Age. What fun…NOT.
We have almost no data from the Arctic Ocean in winter – with few exceptions – so this information is very important to be able understand the processes when the ice is freezing in early winter and we’ll also stay here when it melts in the summer,” he explained.
“A new era has entered, we are going from old ice to young ice, thinner ice and the climate models used today have not captured this new regime or ice situation.
Can anyone explain how the second conclusion can be reached, given the first statement in bold?
The Twain effect —
“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.” ~Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 1883
The BS seems to be getting thicker, as well. Could this be directly correlated, to the increase, in the thickness of the ice? If you repeat a lie, often enough, many people will come to believe it!
IMO Mr Shukman capacity to think logically is inversely proportional to ice thickness.
Just watched his piece on BBC news at ten,
the man is either .. 1) a scientific illiterate,
2) a blinkered manipulating zealot,
or 3) a combination… I think its the latter.
What outrageous conspiracy theory claims by Paul Homewood in claiming that Shukman’s work is “part of their (BBC) propaganda drive for Paris”. If that were true there would multiple programs/items labouring Shukman’s point. ..Oh hang on in additional to the item Paul mentions there Is
May 3 : Arctic mission monitors ice shift webpage with video and open comments (CLOSED now that skeptics have found it)
May 3 : Arctic research from an ice-bound boat Page with 1.5 min of video *
4 May : Arctic: Scientists say signs of ‘transformed region’ Page with 3 min of video
5 May : 6 minute trailer item on Radio 5 Live 3:45 to 3:51
Coming Up
Friday 8 May 23:30 : Arctic Mission with David Shukman TV Prog on World News TV
“The Arctic is the fastest-warming region on Earth, and its fate is one of the biggest unknowns in climate science. If the polar ice retreats, it could accelerate the rise in global temperatures and significantly change the world’s weather patterns. A team of Norwegian scientists has spent the winter on a research ship in the Arctic examining the sea ice. They say it’s becoming thinner and more likely to break up. David Shukman has been aboard their ship.”
* funny how it says the research ship is drifting, whereas in the R5 report he describes the ship as being stuck in ice, as the title suggests
– Funny too how NASA made almost the same set of news stories one month ago from the same ship, couldn’t the BBC have used them ?
– March 19th National Geographic also did A long article from aboard the same ship The Lance
..which reveals that the ship wasn’t supposed to get stuck, but the ice had recently grown up faster than they expected.
note to self “funny how it says the research ship is drifting, whereas in the R5 report he describes the ship as being stuck in ice, as the title suggests” (‘Arctic research from an ice-bound boat’ is the title I am, refering to – yet now I note it says it was “deliberately wedged into the Arctic ice pack”.. I don’t know if they added that bit later, but certainly the NatgGeo article makes it clear it wan’t intentionally stuck on March 19th. It was cos of unpredicted ice.
Before they closed comments some one posted
\\It’s a wonderful thing, the ‘Internet’.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm
“In 2008, Arctic summer sea ice reached the second-lowest extent recorded since the dawn of the satellite era — and winter sea ice reached its lowest recorded extent in 2011. Now climate scientists say the Arctic could be completely ice free in the summer by 2012″.//
..why would 6 people think it’s OK to thumbs-down that 100% true comment ?
or this one 5 people thumbed-down
\\”This matters because the Arctic is on course to switch at some point this century from having permanent ice-cover to existing in a state where the ice comes and goes with the seasons”.
I thought the point of the research was to help understand what might happen. The BBC, apparently, already knows the answer. Such is the insidious propaganda emanating from a once respected institution//
(I see the BBC allowed comments on that page for 24 hours only)
All this hyperventilation about the North Pole.
What does it matter if all the ice were to disappear?
No, really what possible problem would it be?
What is the big deal, eh?
So Hansen said it was import indicator of…? Based on what? That, (laughably) some trace gas in the atmosphere was to spell doom to the whole of creation.
Get real, Arctic ice is a meaningless, a distraction, nothing more.
And the BBC is enforcing the great distraction while Western technological society cripples itself on this myth of global warming.
The ice that really matters is at Hudson Bay: if the bay doesn’t melt back in summer but stays frozen, we are into another Ice Age. So we better pray that it is warm enough to melt this summer.
+1
From Jan 2015:
(Reuters) – Norway’s government invited firms to drill for oil and gas further inside the Arctic Circle on Tuesday, putting it at loggerheads with opposition parties as it seeks to open up new fields at a time of declining output.
It won’t just be Climate Change Zombies watching this research, so too will oil companies and the Norwegian govt (wealth creation dept). Arctic sea ice extent really matters when looking for and extracting oil.
I wonder who that Cambridge Professor could have been?
I saw the news last night and expected to see a comment today. Do you ever get to sleep Paul?
It is hard not to believe such stories, even sceptics like me, which seem to come from careful research. Is it deliberate lies or are they really incompetent? Either seems very unlikely! So what is it and why?
In the early 1970’s, a famous climatologist in Canada predicted that the Arctic would be 25 Degrees F warmer, by 2000 – not on the basis of global warming but because of regional trends.
That was a man-size prediction! Everybody in Canada thought that would be great. Didn’t happen.
It would still be nice.
Whatever is happening with the ice, it certainly seems to be the case that BBC science correspondents are getting thicker.
What was the icebreaker there for, if the ice is so thin?
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
‘Villains who twirl the moustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged.’
Reblogged this on paullitely and commented:
It is very revealing they the amount of time over freezing 0 degrees Centigrade is declining. It is also colder than average. So how does the ice melt under those conditions?
Reblogged this on Climate Collections and commented:
Good images of increasing multi-year ice.