arctic ice increases 60%

Why Some Meteorologists Still Deny Global Warming | MOTHER JONES

 

Panel Says Global Warming Carries Risk of Deep Changes | NEW YORK TIMES

 

Antarctic sea ice hit 35-year record high Saturday

By Jason Samenow
September 23 at 3:23 pm

Antarctic sea ice has grown to a record large extent for a second straight year, baffling scientists seeking to understand why this ice is expanding rather than shrinking in a warming world.

On Saturday, the ice extent reached 19.51 million square kilometers, according to data posted on the National Snow and Ice Data Center Web site. That number bested record high levels set earlier this month and in 2012 (of 19.48 million square kilometers). Records date back to October 1978.


Antarctic sea ice extent on September 22 compared to 1981-2010 median depicted by orange curve (NSIDC)



Antarctic sea ice extent Sunday compared to 1979-2000 normal (NSIDC)

The increasing ice is especially perplexing since the water beneath the ice has warmed, not cooled.

“The overwhelming evidence is that the Southern Ocean is warming,” said Jinlun Zhang, a University of Washington scientist, studying Antarctic ice. “Why would sea ice be increasing? Although the rate of increase is small, it is a puzzle to scientists.”

In a new study in the Journal of Climate, Zhang finds both strengthening and converging winds around the South Pole can explain 80 percent of the increase in ice volume which has been observed....

But no one seems to have a conclusive answer as to why winds are behaving this way.

“I haven’t seen a clear explanation yet of why the winds have gotten stronger,” Zhang told Michael Lemonick of Climate Central....

...it’s apparent the relationship between ozone depletion, climate warming from greenhouse gases, natural variability, and how Antarctic ice responds is all very complicated....


the whole article is here;

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...tic-sea-ice-hit-35-year-record-high-saturday/

 

It is going to be a cold winter.

 

Ok, read the whole thing. Interesting, and good in a way, but in the big picture is not a big deal. Overall, things are still hotting up, and this small increase in Antarctic ice (and it is small) could easily reverse. It may just be an anomaly in either the modelling or in the natural variation of weather. Hard to tell at the moment.

ETA: By the way newspapers, even good ones, are notorious for mangling science reporting. If a news article seems like it might be a bit iffy, I usually check one of the science sites for an update on the topic. Haven't checked for this one yet, but good places to look are:

http://www.newscientist.com/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/
http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html

 

The thing is that an increase in Antarctic Sea Ice during winter is 100% in line with expectations associated with Global Warming.

why? because a warmer earth means more moisture collected into the tropical and sub-topical air masses. And these are the air masses who's vapour feeds the polar storms.

Furthermore Antarctic storms have the unique feature that they have unobstructed latitudes to circle the globe with. This means higher energy storms will produce higher wind velocities which in the winter will result in higher cooling rates.

and that's exactly what we are seeing

 

The Washington Post article referenced the study as coming from the Journal of Climate
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00139.1

and the University of Washington
http://www.washington.edu/news/2013...ain-puzzling-growth-of-sea-ice-in-antarctica/

and Columbia University
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50578/abstract

I posted on this phenomena when it was first reported last September here:
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/al...ic-ice-increases-60-a-48274-3.html#post652476

EDIT:
As NoEyeDeer mentions below, "arctic ice increases 60%" is just from the thread title. The forum software decided what title to give the url that I posted above, which looked like this before the software got a hold of it (with spaces added to fool the software)
http:// www. boatdesign .net/forums/ all-things-boats- and-boating/ arctic-ice-increases-60-a- 48274-3. html# post652476

 

And the fact that you are calling Antarctic ice "arctic ice" is telling.

 

That's just the thread title. The OP took it from Faux News.

 

http://nypost.com/2013/12/05/global-warming-proof-is-evaporating/

What global warming?
Article also makes the point that belief in global warming is like a religion. An intangible faith without any evidence.

The 'pause' lasts maybe forever. No one knows it is all just make believe.

 

yes, the "pause" is only a pause if you were clairvoyant and know it will continue in the future. The temperatures just stop their earlier rise, calling it a temporary 'pause' assumes it will keep rising. sounds like faith to me.

I also find all the sophistry used to explain the increasing Antarctic ice as really a symptom of rising temps rather amusing. Truth is, no body knows why. that is what the experts say. They just do not not like saying they really do not know what the future will be like.

 

You may wish to review post 251.

 

Um do you know what "noise functions" are? Do you know how to do the analysis for such?

 

Note BTW the source Petros cites: Jason Samenow has a curious CV

He only graduated with his MS in 2000 having interned at an NBC affiliate as a weatherman

He then went to straight to the GWB WhiteHouse where his job was to monitor scientific journals and present abstracted briefings to WH and EPA staff on what was in those journals, and to generate political spin on behalf of the GWB WH on climate change

While at the WH he started a blog about DC Weather forecasts which did well enough that the Wa PO brought him on to blog and write for them


IOW this guy is a political hack, not a scientist http://www.linkedin.com/in/jsamenow so his claims that "scientists are baffled" by the localized increases in sea ice is just nonsense.

Note also that the increase in seasonal surface sea ice has been accompanied by a melting of deeper ice sheets and some glacial retreat. The curious aspect of that is that this sort of deeper melt also perversely increases seasonal ice formation. Why? because ice is fresh water. As deeper ice sheets melt, the release fresh water into the sea. Fresh water is lighter than salt water and hence tends to float. This creates a dramatic decrease in salinity of surface water that in turn raises the freezing point of the sea surface.

Lower salinity water not only has a higher freezing point, but it also is more subject to evaporative cooling from winds as the partial vapor pressure of water is higher.

QED more seasonal surface sea ice.

 

So you admit he knows more about weather and climatology than you. Great.
I studied both in university and I agree with Jason.