2012 Arctic Sea Ice Melt Shatters 2007 Record

Arctic sea ice extent -  A NEW RECORD MINIMUM

On 19 September the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) released a preliminary report stating that the 2012 minimum sea ice extent in the Arctic was probably reached on 16 September 2012.  On that date the sea ice extent was 3.41 million km2.  That sea ice extent smashed the previous record minimum sea ice extent from 2007 by 760,000 km2.

The map below shows the sea ice extent on 9/16/2012 when it was at its minimum (white area).  The orange lines show the 1979-2000 average for sea ice extent.

What percent of sea ice cover remained of the historical 1979-2000 average at the end of this year's melt season?  Just over 51%.  That's right, the Arctic sea ice was nearly half gone at the end of the melt season.

Again, some people might argue that the sea ice extent minimum might have been a fluke random event, but that is looking less and less likely.  When we look at the past several years' sea ice minimum data they ALL fall below the 1979-2000 average.  The graph below shows the sea ice minimum extents for all the years 2007-2012.  The likelihood of this many years of sea ice minima below the average by random chance alone is just 1.56%.

And this table shows the actual sea ice extent data:

To wrap things up, "Is the climate change house on fire?" Should we be alarmed?  Look at the data and reach your own conclusion - and these data are just the tip of the iceberg.

Is the house on fire? Indications of climate change - 2012

I'm not an alarmist, but there are times to be alarmed - like when your house is on fire, or when you see the headlong approach of unswerving headlights.

When it comes to global climate, is the house on fire?

Record-settting number of high temperature records

The most recent data I could find on daily temperature records in the USA was from July 2012.  According to the National Climate Data Center, there were 23,283 new record high temperatures set across the United States from Jan-July 2012.

There are also some other troubling data and scenarios out there.

In mid-July a compelling article on climate change and current weather and climate patterns by Bill McKibben appeared in Rolling Stone Magazine.  You can read it in its entirety by clicking the link below.  

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719

Building on data presented in that article we are now entering the 329th consecutive month with average temperatures above the 20th century average.  Yes, you read that right...329th month...that's nearly 27.5 years where EVERY month's average was above the 1900-1999 average temperature.  Now it is expected that any set of data from a natural system would include variability - year to year rainfall totals, temperature fluctuations, your heart rate, your annual body mass fluctuations, etc.  But when we see over 27 years of monthly average temperature data above the average of that for an entire century of temperature readings, we should probably sit up and think about what's going on.

If temperature fluctuations were behaving completely randomly, with no long-term temperature increase or decrease, we would predict that a given month's average temperature has a 50% chance (probability = 0.5) of being above average.  The chances of two consecutive months being above average would be 0.5 x 0.5 = 0.25 (= a 25% chance of happening by random chance alone).  So, what are the odds of observing 329 consecutive months with average temperatures above the 1900-1999 average temperature by random chance alone?  to get the answer to this question you need to multiply 0.5 by itself 329 times.  The answer is, according to the Rolling Stone article 3.7 x 10^-99.  That means that there is a 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000037% chance of that happening by random chance alone.  That's such a small likelihood of happening that it's time to look for things that could be driving that other than random chance.

The prime suspect?  A trend of global climate change, i.e., global warming.

The total global average temperature hasn't increased all that much so far in the past 100 years or so...only 0.8oC.  And if we are seeing significant changes with only this small change in global temperature, what could happen when we reach 2oC?  - the projected limit that we could reach without incurring MAJOR global environmental and ecological effects?

BTW, climate models suggest that the atmosphere-ocean-earth system may be able to accommodate the emission of another 595 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere before we reach the 2oC mark.  But guess what?  The cumulative proven reserves of fossil fuels currently controlled by energy companies and countries with nationalized mining and extraction = 2,795 gigatons of fossil fuel.  That's just the fossil fuel that we know about.  That's 5x the total we can emit before hitting the 2oC mark.

Are there other indicators are there that climate is shifting?  Check out some of my other postings.

Record sea ice melt season reduces sea ice extent to only about 50% of its historical average

It's nearly the middle of September, the traditional end of the sea ice melt season in the Arctic Ocean.  The rate of sea ice melt has slowed over the past few days, perhaps signaling the beginning of the end of the Arctic Ocean sea ice melt season for 2012, but it's not completely done yet, and it's been a crazy summer in the Arctic!

Do you see what I see?  The extent of sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean is WAY smaller now than the 1979-2000 average (orange lines) with only ~51% of the 1979-2000 average sea ice cover remaining today.

Consider this...

The average sea ice cover (extent) in the Arctic from 1979-2000 was about 6.7 million square kilometers.  Right now there is only about 3.45 million square kilometers of sea ice in the Arctic (as shown above).  The area of ice that is MISSING is shown on the map below.  Sea ice extent has NEVER been this low.

How does this compare to the previous sea ice melt record?  The previous sea ice melt record was in 2007.  The dark gray line on the graph below shows the 1979-2000 average sea ice cover.  The dashed green line shows the sea ice cover during 2007, and the blue line shows sea ice cover during 2012.  The 2012 ice melt smashed the 2007 record, with over 750,000 km2 more sea ice melting than in 2007.

Interestingly, the high amount of sea ice melt in 2007 was largely the result of an unusual Arctic weather year.  It had huge high pressure regions over large areas of the polar north, and lots and lots of sunshine, which meant lots of sea ice melting.  In 2012 however weather conditions did not appear to be set up to produce lots of sea ice melt.  There was a major cyclonic low pressure system that produced lots of cloud cover.  And that combined with associated winds normally slows sea ice melt.  But not this year.  It has just apparently gotten too warm overall in the Arctic for that kind of weather system to slow sea ice melt as much as it used to.

Maybe the sea ice melt in 2007 and 2012 were just statistical outliers.  I would have considered that as a possibility...until I saw the data for sea ice in the Arctic for the years between 2007 and 2012.

The graph below shows the sea ice cover data for the years 2007-2012 plus the 1979-2000 average.  An outlier is an observation that falls well outside of the observed long term trend.  What we see when we look at the data is that every year since 2007, and others not shown here, all fall well outside the 1979-2000 average.  But because there are getting to be so many years outside that average they collectively no longer can really be considered outliers.  Instead, they are possibly representing a new trend.

I just read an extremely interesting paper on what is and has been going on in the Arctic with respect to sea ice.  I recommend it highly if you are seriously interested in this topic.

• Stroeve, J. C., et al. 2012. The Arctic's rapidly shrinking sea ice cover: a research synthesis. Climate Change 110:1005-1027 DOI 10:1007/s10585-011-0101-1

Here is a link to a PDF file containing that paper: 

https://arcus.org/files/projects/supplemental/674/stroeve_etal_seaice_synthesis_2011.pdf

One of the things I found most compelling in Stroeve's article was the analysis of sea ice extent over the last 30+ years.  The conclusion is that the rate of sea ice loss is no longer linear.  Annual sea ice extents are dropping faster over the past decade than during previous decades.  The upper graph shows the rate of sea ice loss 1979-1998 in blue, and the rate of sea ice loss 1999-2010 in red.  The significant difference in these rates of sea ice loss is worth noting.  Stroeve's paper refers to models that suggest that the Arctic could become ice free in the summer as soon as 30 years from now.    

On the heels of this year's record sea ice melt, however, some climatologists are starting to suggest the possibility of a summer free of ice in the Arctic as soon as 10 years from now.  Yow!

2012 Arctic sea ice melt sets new record with no signs of slowing down

This is amazing...it's like watching a slow motion train wreck.  You want to look away, but you just can't do it!

The former record Arctic Ocean sea ice melt was set five years ago, in 2007, and though a couple of other years since then looked like they might flirt with setting a new record, none of them really came close.  In October 2007 The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that the Arctic sea ice had shattered the pre-exisitng record from 2005.  You can read that full report by clicking the link below.

http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20071001_pressrelease.html

This graph from the NSIDC October 2007 report shows the difference between the sea ice melt in 2005 and 2007.

The dark gray line shows the 1979-2000 satellite data showing the average sea ice extent during those 20 years.  The dashed green line shows the record set in 2005, and the blue line shows the new record that was set in 2007.

The NSIDC analysts concluded that the 2007 record ice melt was the result of a series of weather and other factors including the following:

• Lower than average sea ice extent at the beginning of the ice melt season
• Thinner ice than average at the beginning of the ice melt season
• A persistent high pressure cell over the central Arctic Ocean through much of the melt season.  That high pressure cell meant clearer skies, and increased amount of solar radiation that struck the ice and ocean surface, accelerating melting.
• Low pressure cells over northern Siberia that produced strong offshore winds that pushed sea ice offshore faster and earlier than normal, plus these winds were warm and promoted further sea ice melt

OK, so what!?

Well, this year, 2012, the Arctic Ocean sea ice melt season still has anywhere from 2 weeks to a month to go, and there is already a new sea ice melt record that from all current indications has the potential to not only exceed, but smash the old record!

This is what the 2012 sea ice melt season looks like so far.

The dark gray line shows the 1979-2000 average, and the dashed green line shows pattern of sea ice melt in 2007, the year of the previous record sea ice melt.  The blue line in this graph shows the sea ice melt pattern for 2012.  If you look at the vertical axis on the left of the graph you can eyeball it and see that the sea ice extent for 29 Aug is probably between 500,000 and 1,000,000 km2 less in 2012 than it was in 2007.  All right, so what were the conditions this year?

The map below shows the maximum sea ice cover of the Arctic Ocean in spring 2012 (18 March 2012). If you look, the sea ice extent is greater than average in the Bering Sea and off Kamchatka.  It reached historical average extents off of the east coast of Greenland and exceeded them off the west coast of Greenland.  At the same time Arctic sea ice cover was below average in the Barents Sea north of Scandinavia and Russia's Kola Peninsula, but not really many other places.

OK, so what conditions existed over the Arctic that led to the current sea ice melt record?

Well, for one thing, there was a strong, cyclonic Arctic low pressure cell that appeared near the end of the first week of August.  Analysts at the NSIDC reported that this type of storm normally spreads sea ice out and slows the rate of sea ice melt, but if you look at the graph of 29 Aug 2009 for the first part of August 2012 the rate of sea ice melt actually increased instead of decreasing!  This is completely counterintuitive when compared to the effects of similar conditions in the past.

This map shows the high and low pressure cells that produced that Arctic storm.  The low pressure cell in the middle of the map should have been a place where cloud cover formed, blocked solar radiation, and produced winds that slowed the compacting of sea ice and sea ice melt...but that didn't happen.

So, to sum up, there was a lot of ice when the melt season began, conditions conducive to rapid sea ice melt were not particularly evident in this year's weather patterns, but a record-setting sea ice melt has already occurred and there are still at least two weeks and perhaps as many as four weeks to go in the ice melt season.

This is what the sea ice cover looked like as of 29 August 2012.  Remember that the orange lines represent the average area of sea ice cover from 1979-2000.  The map speaks for itself.

The only thing we can do now is sit back and see how long the sea ice melt will continue, and by how much the old sea ice melt record will be broken.  Sigh...

Global Climate Update - summer 2012

I know that you're probably miffed at me because I've been slacking off for the past couple of weeks, and I haven't given you any Arctic sea ice or national or global climate updates.  Well, everyone deserves a break, but now that we managed to survive July, and some of the agencies and labs that track climate trends have reported in, it's time to take a look at what's going on out there.

First of all...IT'S HOT OUT THERE!

This map shows the global temperature anomalies for June 2012 compared to a long-term average of temperature data from 1971-2000.  The bigger the red circle, the hotter it is compared to the historical average, and the bigger the blue dot the cooler.

Yep, almost everywhere, especially almost everywhere on land, is hot!  And in most of the high north latitudes as much as 4-5oC hotter than the historic average.  Localized weather conditions are keeping a few places, like Australia, central Africa. and the North Pacific cooler than usual, but everywhere else it's hot, dang hot!

Yeah, like you needed a map from NOAA (The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) to tell you that.

Next let's take a look at the United States drought index.  This map is provided courtesy of the USDA (Dept of Agriculture and other govt. agencies that track weather, climate, and their effects on agriculture.

This map shows that state of drought conditions across the United States as of 31 July 2012.  Yep, the darker red the color, the more intense the drought.  Scarily, the most intensive drought conditions stretch across the country's bread basket of the Great Plains states.

I just talked with my folks who live in Wichita, KS, and they say that the corn around there is in REALLY bad shape.  They told me that the leaves are dry and brittle, just hanging down on the stalks.  They also told me that while traveling to Oklahoma City recently that they saw a thermometer that said 118oF!  Yow!  

Only the Pacific NW and isolated parts of other states seem to be spared this year's summer drought.

All right, let's see what's brewing up north - our "canary in a coal mine" for global climate.

First stop - Greenland.  This graph from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC.org) shows a disturbing development.  The puple-ish area at the bottom of the graph shows the historical average including data from 1980-1999 of ice melt area on Greenland.  The other colors show observed ice melt in 2010 (blue), 2011 (green), and 2012 (red) through the middle of July.  This year the ice melt area has shot off the charts, uncovering between 4-5x the normal amount of land area uncovered by melting ice.  Other data (not shown here) show that Greenland's ice cap is getting thinner around the edges and thicker in the middle, but that all in all ice is melting faster than it is being added.  The bottom line?  The Greenland ice cap is starting to shrink.

OK, what about the Arctic Ocean 2012 spring and summer sea ice melt?  The graph below shows the historical average amount of ice melt from the years 1979-2000, and the ice melt trends for 2007-2012.  The ice melt in 2007 was the most extreme recorded so far, but if you look at the graph again you will see that the sea ice melt trend for 2012 is nearly identical to that seen in 2007 at this point in the year (8-5-2012).  There is no way to know if this rapid rate if ice melt will continue, but if it does we may well be looking at a new record sea ice melt.  It is, at least, but not by much, the record for Arctic sea ice melt for this date.

The amount of sea ice remaining in the Arctic ocean is currently about 2 MILLION square kilometers less than the 1979-2000 historical average.  Now that's worth noting.

This map shows the current extent of sea ice cover (at least 15% cover) in the Arctic Ocean.  The NW Passage has opened up again west of Baffin Island, and sea ice melt is greatly ahead of historical trends (the orange lines) north of most of both Alaska and Siberia.  OK...so what?

  

This graph shows what has become a predictable trend of decreasing sea ice cover.  July 2012 is a close second to 2011 as the all-time lowest sea ice cover for this month.  The downward trend of sea ice cover, i.e., increasing trend of sea ice melt continues...

Climatologists who study the patterns and processes of climate and climate change developed a set of scenarios regarding Arctic sea ice melt.  This graph shows two scenarios starting in 1900 and running through 2100.  The blue line indicates a scenario of "business as usual" greenhouse gas emissions, and the red line represents an updated scenario based on an improved model, but the black line, that represents observed sea ice extent data for the month of September 1952-2011 shows sea ice cover declining at an even faster rate than even the latest model scenario.

How different are the observed data and the model scenarios?  The original "business as usual" model scenario indicates that the sea ice melt over the past few years is happening 40-50 years sooner than the original scenario showed.  And the observed sea ice melt is still proceeding 10-20 years faster than the newer model suggests should be happening.

No matter how you slice it, it's warmer out there now than it used to be.  It's warmer on land, ice is melting faster on Greenland, and sea ice is melting faster in the Artctic than it used to.  The bottom line is that, believe it or not, like it not, the global climate is changing - warming.

One last thing...what about the Antarctic?  Sea ice formation and melting appears to be proceeding normally there, but this is south polar pattern is maintained due to unique currents and oceanographic factors around the Antarctic continent that keep it colder than anyplace else on the planet.  In short, the Antarctic East Wind Drift Current and Antarctic West Wind Drift Current create the Antarctic Divergence that keeps supercooled water inshore AND moves supercooled water north away from Antarctica.  This supercooled water is denser and will not readily mix with the warmer, less dense water masses found in the southern Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans.  So the Antarctic is the exception to what is happening globally.  But to explain this more fully would require another complete posting.