Politics, Science

Arctic Sea Ice Capades

-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger

arctic sea iceA recent article in the Daily Mail, and picked up by other media, claims an increase in Arctic ice foretells a cooling trend. The article boasts of a 60% increase in sea ice over the minimum that occurred in 2012. While the actual numbers from IARC-JAXA Information System (IJIS) show, as of yesterday, only a 50% increase, this is still a significant expansion.

Professor Judith Curry, climatologist and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, referred to the title as melodramatic and said of the content of the article: “the ‘cooling’ aspect has been overplayed.” Last year, University of Reading climate scientist Ed Hawkins predicted that “there would be MORE Arctic sea-ice in 2013, compared to 2012.”

An important tool used in analyzing random data is the statistical phenomenon known as reversion to the mean, or  regression to the mean. The extent of sea ice at the end of the annual melt, mid to late September, set a extreme minimum in 2012. Using reversion to the mean, it is more likely that the the extent in 2013 will be larger. Exactly what happened. The following graph indicates the variability of sea ice extent and the clear downward trend.

ArcticEscalator2012_med

Cherry picking short-term results while ignoring long-term trends is a hallmark of misleading climate reporting. Long-term data needs to be analyzed to average out cyclical dependencies. There is a strong natural variability in sea ice extent and separating the natural from the greenhouse gases requires decades long timescales.

Climate science is an undertaking fraught with complex interactions and unknown cycles with unknown effects. It will take time and money to improve our understanding. However, improvement is mandatory if we are to be responsible conservators of our world.

Climate scientists estimate the amount of sea ice loss due to greenhouse gasses is between 50-70%.

H/T: Dana Nuccitelli, Steven Novella, Climate Dialogue, Alexis Sobel Fitts, Phil Plait.

350 thoughts on “Arctic Sea Ice Capades”

  1. ssupak 1, September 14, 2013 at 1:29 pm

    … Dredd, no, extent is not area, or square miles covered. …
    …
    But you’re right, volume is a better measure. The ice this year is still thin, even though the minimum extent is larger than last year.
    ===============================
    Oh bullshit.

    Science does not use two terms two mean the same thing.

    Pseudo science may, but not science.

    Area is length x width (expressed in square inches, km, miles).

    Volume is length x width x depth (expressed cubic inches, km, miles).

    Are you deft or just trying to be cute?

  2. Now, this is interesting. The interlocutory appeal by the National Review to wiggle out of discovery in Dr. Mann’s lawsuit against them has been denied. Discovery can move forward. Since Dr. Mann’s work is published in peer reviewed journals, there is very little additional he will have to provide in discovery. The National Review, on the other hand, no doubt has plenty they would like to keep hidden. More at the link:

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/14/1238829/-Courageous-Climate-Scientist-Beats-the-Hoaxers-Again?detail=hide

  3. Paul 1, September 14, 2013 at 1:28 pm

    I love the people on both sides of this issue …
    ======================
    Like there are two sides.

    There aren’t.

    If there were two sides, then one would be the sane folk, the other would be the “incurious dupes, stooges, patsies, pawns, chumps, rubes and suckers” …

    But there is only one reality: Oil-Qaeda is destroying our source of life, the Earth.

  5. Scott Supak:

    I’ll take your bet if we change the wager to say that it has to beat the worst warming trend in the last 100,000 years.

    The earth warms, the earth cools. It has been doing so for its entire existence, or at least since climate formed.

    I am betting you wont take that bet.

  6. nal:

    the trend is down but we are only talking 30 years of data. The climate is billions of years old. You cannot take 30 years of data and say it is a trend.

    http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/iceagebook/history_of_climate.html

    if you want to shut down industry, go ahead and do it. It isnt going to change anything except reduce the quality and length of human life.

    Warmers and people who used to think the earth was the center of the universe have a good deal in common.

  7. Paul, I’ll put my certainty next to $250 dollars. The earth is warming. I have no doubt. Anyone who thinks it’s not should put their money where their mouth is. If they won’t, then that proves they really don’t believe their own BS.

  8. Is there a downside to not pollluting the environment? The chart “illustrated” the point very well.

    I think people should be alarmed by the chart. It shows a halving of the total amount of ice over decades with a strong downward moving average. Show this to a wall street technical analyst and he / she would be certainly opinioned that this is a fatal trend.

  9. Fake Skeptics is a better word for these tools. And I’ve gotten so sick of arguing with them that I’ve resorted to a new tactic, which I will now use on “nick spinelli” who said: “I am skeptical of all short term data being said to be dispositive, including hot spells being trumpeted as proof of warming. That’s Al Gore’s MO.”

    I’m also skeptical of using noise to make one’s argument instead of finding the signal. That’s why I’m willing to bet on these things, like I did at Intrade, where I made A LOT of money on the sea ice extent last year. So, Nick, you want to bet? I’ll bet on ice extent. I’ll bet on surface temp anomalies. You name it, I’ll bet on the signal I know is there. If you think it’s not, then by all means, let’s bet. Loser pays winner’s charity.

    I recently had a conversation with Patrick Michaels, the CATO Institute’s leading fake skeptic. He and I were going to bet $250 on something he said, which is that it’s a “good bet” that we’d go 25 years (1997-2021) without seeing statistically significant (p < .05) warming in HadCRU4. When he found out my charity was the Global Warming Scientists Legal Defense fund he stopped writing me back.

    I'm always looking for takers on that bet.

    And, Dredd, no, extent is not area, or square miles covered. The NSIDC site is down because of flooding in CO, but here's the URL for the term.

    http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/data/terminology.html‎

    Extent is the latitudinal ocean area that is covered by ice at any given time. It will always be a bigger number than area. But you're right, volume is a better measure. The ice this year is still thin, even though the minimum extent is larger than last year.

  10. I love the people on both sides of this issue with the names they use for the other side. Wasn’t too long ago that the standard treatment for illness was bleeding. “Everyone” thought this was the correct thing to do. I’m sure they had nice names for those that advocated small bugs might be responsible for disease. So for those that are so certain on their position (man caused, man not caused, warming, cooling, neither), put your certainty in perspective next to those that advocated bleeding when you got the flu.

  14. Nal,

    Decent of you to use the term “skeptics.”

    To your credit, you did not describe them as “last of the great Medieval thinkers,” “the brain-dead,” “doorstops,” or “silly dummies.”

  16. nick spinelli 1, September 14, 2013 at 9:37 am

    I can’t find the kitty.
    ===================
    I can’t find the Polar Bear.

  17. I am skeptical of all short term data being said to be dispositive, including hot spells being trumpeted as proof of warming. That’s Al Gore’s MO.

  18. David,

    An excellent example of how isolated data (or even subsets of data) don’t necessarily equate to a trend.

  20. Fifth graders know that “sea ice extent” is another way of saying “square miles of area covered”, while “sea ice volume” is a way of saying “quantity of sea ice” (How Fifth Graders Calculate Ice Volume).

    The volume or quantity of ice is going down, decreasing:

    The volume of sea ice in the Arctic hit a new low this past winter, according to observations from the European Space Agency’s (Esa) Cryosat mission.
    …
    Prof Andy Shepherd, from Leeds University, said: “Now that we have three years of data, we can see that some parts of the ice pack have thinned more rapidly than others. At the end of winter, the ice was thinner than usual. Although this summer’s extent will not get near its all-time satellite-era minimum set last year, the very thin winter floes going into the melt season could mean that the summer volume still gets very close to its record low,” he told BBC News.
    …
    “In terms of really understanding what is going on in the Arctic and trying to put the changes we see in the larger scale context – volume is the key part of the story,” explained Prof Alan O’Neill, chairman of Esa’s Earth Science Advisory Committee.

    (BBC, emphasis added). Since 1983 the volume or quantity of ice in the Arctic has gone down by half, and the loss is accelerating.

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