Arctic Ice Stays the Course: August 15 Summary | Science Matters
August 17, 2015
Ron Clutz summarises the latest state of Arctic sea ice, and concludes it is likely track close to last year through the minimum in September.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/arctic-ice-stays-the-course-august-15-summary/
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I’m sure I read recently that the Russians were restarting their Arctic oil well surveys. They use some hefty icebreakers, nuclear powered ones, to assist the survey crews to move around. I predict this will show an INCREASE in Arctic ice melt during September.
That could well be, as the Russians operate a fleet of more that 50 icebreakers along the Norther Sea Route (NSR). And they are building more nuclear ones.
http://barentsobserver.com/sites/barentsobserver.com/files/styles/grid_8/public/main/articles/icebreakeryamal.28rosatomflo.jpg?itok=-NoYSa0G
http://barentsobserver.com/sites/barentsobserver.com/files/styles/grid_8/public/main/articles/icebreakeryamal.28rosatomflo.jpg?itok=-NoYSa0G
Is there a purpose in this post?
Figure 3. July ice extent for 1979 to 2015 shows a decline of 7.2% per decade relative to the 1981 to 2010 average.
Given that the the accepted standard for detecting a climate trend is 30 years, why does this minor change deserve attention?
Yes, that chart shows something happened in the 90’s when multi-year ice was flushed out and replaced by newer ice more prone to melting. The issue is whether that cycle is now reversing. Of course Arctic ice extent has varied greatly over many centuries, not just since 1979, and from artifacts we know it has been both greater and smaller than presently.
Also, if you do some proper research, you will find that for the first 2/3 to 3/4 of the Holocene, Arctic sea ice was basically a non-event in summer.
The real FACT is that the current level is anomalously high compared to all but the several hundred years of the last 10,000 years.
That period was called the Little Ice Age, and from historical notes, was not at all pleasant.
We can all be very thankful that that small amount of warming has occurred.
(that little molehill on the right hand end of the graph below)
Unfortunately, it seems to have stopped.
Some more warming would have been very beneficial for all life on Earth, as is the small increase in atmospheric CO2 level which mankind has graciously given to the world’s plant life.
Andy, your perspective is refreshing and I want to do a post on this. The chart is revealing, but the trends as pictured do not match the stated numbers. Clearly, temperatures dropped much more than 0.5C per millennium in the recent period, according to the graph
Whoops, my bad, the early rate was 0.05 (I didn’t grog the extra zero). No problem.
Ron, The graph is from Ed Hoskins
If you strip the pic’s url link you can to get to his web site.
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/
Lots of useful stuff 🙂
Thanks Ed 🙂
About that 30 years: The concept is what a normal individual will think normal weather will be based on the early normal part of her or his life. The span for normal in this formulation was selected, before computers, as 30 years beginning with a year ending in 1 and ending with a year ending with 0. For example: 1981-2010
For comparison such spans are now called “climate normals” and frequently referenced as climatology, as in “.. about 4 degrees warmer than climatology.”
This concept has nothing to do with “climate being an average” nor with 30 years needed to talk of “climate trends.”
What does the graph for 1950-1979 look like? And the graph for 1920-1949? And the graph for 980-1009? And the graph for?…….
“the accepted standard for detecting a climate trend is 30 years”
Accepted by who?
By those that know that the latter part of last century just happen to have been the upward part of a 60 year cycle?
Coincidence.. of course not.
CON.. you bet you !!! And you and many others have fallen for it.
You do realise that apart from the NON-CO2 1998-2001 El Nino event, there has been NO WARMING in the whole of the satellite record, don’t you !
The El Nino was caused by the series of strong solar cycles and delivered a step up of about 0.26ºC.
Discount that 0.26ºC and the small warming trend before the El Nino is now basically cancelled by the small cooling trend since..
There has been NO CO2 FORCED WARMING in the whole 36 years of the satellite record.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/plot/rss/from:2001.2/trend/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1997/trend/plot/rss/from:2001.2/trend/offset:-.26
Thanks, Paul.
Watching nature is fascinating enough, I have no time left for watching ideologies.
The 1979 startup date is a big cherry pick on the part of climate alarmists, because that was perhaps the coldest year in the last 100 years and was at the end of a long period of global cooling which began around 1940. So if the startup date was 1939 rather than 1979, the chart would give you an entirely different impression.