This is a continuation of the previous (and now unwieldy) post on the current Arctic situation. We’ll have a proper round up in a few weeks.
Climate science from climate scientists...
Climate science from climate scientists...
This is a continuation of the previous (and now unwieldy) post on the current Arctic situation. We’ll have a proper round up in a few weeks.
Update on Sea Ice Projection
It appears that while the type of projection may fit the evolution of sea ice extent this year, it is fairly sensitive to the coefficients in the quadratic trendline for daily sea ice extent fall, and moreover, that the coefficients are themselves fairly sensitive to recent daily behavior…
There are now two projections using the same method. However, the first uses a quadratic trendline based on the actual daily reduction in sea ice extent for the period 6/1/2008-8/27/2008, whereas the second uses a quadratic trendline based on the actual daily reduction in sea ice extent for the period 6/1/2008-9/3/2008.
I believe the following two charts speak for themselves:
2008 Daily Sea Ice Extent Fall (6/1/2008-9/3/2008)
http://i38.tinypic.com/33xvgwk.jpg
2008 Sea Ice Extent
http://i35.tinypic.com/1236x6c.jpg
*
Captcha fortune cookie: obligations Moody
Ok! if we are resigned to the fact of no summer ice from 70N in a few years and then longer and progressively longer periods of an ice free state, how quickly will that huge area of dark warming ocean really affect global climate? I appreciate the climatic time lag for factors affecting the ocean can be substantial. The less reflective ice means that more of the suns energy is trapped in the atmosphere thus increasing air temps. In reality the area of arctica compared to antarctica is like comparing a fly with an elephant respectively. If the ice of antarctica was to melt at the same rate as arctica I’d start digging our family cemetry right now. What I’m saying is what affect will prolonged periods of an ice free arctic have on the world’s climate???
I understand your point, and agree that discussions on the ice extent over the course a few years may be a little overheated.
“If the Arctic ice recovers to the long term average in the next few years does that falsify the AGW hypothesis?”
Please see here for the development over thirty years:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.jpg
Note the trend. IMHO, if the arctic ice recovers to pre-1980 levels in the next few years that would be remarkable indeed.
Also a question: what exactly do you mean with “the AGW hypothesis”? There are many different observations, correlations and predictions involved here.
Alan:
Because the impact of rapid sea ice decline will be felt throughout the northern hemisphere, as the changing pattern of atmospheric and oceanic heat flows directly impacts NH “weather”. This is – potentially – rapid climate change happening now, and it threatens to bring even faster change by destabilising methane hydrates in shallow Arctic seas and speeding up permafrost thaw.
Serious enough for you?
There’s more Arctic ice this year than last year, in context.
;)
Wayne, a note FYI re: albedo
“The extent of spring 2008 snow cover over Eurasia was the lowest on record for any spring in the 42-year historical satellite record. Conversely, North American snow cover extent was slightly above average. For the Northern Hemisphere, spring 2008 was the third least extensive spring snow cover.”
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080613_springtemp.html
#346 (Cobblyworlds) Thanks for your interesting discussion, which I find quite convincing regarding what has happened in recent years.
Here’s my initial response to the key issues you raise.
Formation of new ice: agreed, it was particularly sudden last year, as the very anomalously warm sea temperatures meant it was only much later in the autumn than average, when the air temperatures had got particularly low, that the ice was able to re-form and once it did it was very rapid. The re-freeze might have been even later were it not for relatively fresher surface water. Thus, at the date when re-freeze began in a given location, both surface ocean temperature and sub-surface temperature are likely to have been at or above the temperatures on the much earlier re-freeze date the previous year. And not only would the new first year ice have started life as relatively fresher water, but assuming it formed more suddenly there would have been less time for brine rejection. All of which would point to that ice being even more vulnerable during the 2008 melt season.
The 2007 Nghiem paper shows perennial ice was already down from 32.9 per cent in March 2005 to 25.5 per cent in March 2007 March 2007
( despite the wafer-thin evidence of recovery 2005-6 you refer to – yes 2006 minimum extent was above 2005 minimum, and 2006/7 max extent was fractionally above 2005/6 max extent; however, average extent appears to have been lower in 2006 than 2005, and min, average and subsequent max area all appear to have been lower in 2006 – http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.jpg )
So at that stage I agree there was justified worry about a potential tipping point, and that worry was borne out by the record summer 2007 melt. But if perennial ice was low in March 2007, presumably by March 2008 the line had dropped off the bottom of the already low graph position in Fig 3. So if we’d reached a tipping point, then summer 2008 would be utter meltdown whatever the weather conditions then or over the previous winter.
But remember the Nghiem paper associates the shift from perennial to season ice with the following changes:
“…the change in winter preconditioned the sea ice cover for more efficient melt and further ice reduction in summer. Winter preconditioning of summer sea ice coverage was associated with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) [Partington et al., 2003] and with the Arctic Oscillation (AO) [Rigor et al., 2002]. The NAO index in positive phases is also correlated to the areal flux of ice export through Fram Strait [Kwok and Rothrock, 1999]. The monthly AO index also exhibited mostly positive values during September to November 2005 and March 2006 to March 2007, a pattern which enhances ice advection away from the coast of the East Siberian and Laptev Seas and increases ice export out of Fram Strait [Rigor et al., 2002].”
Here’s the most recent chart from the UK Met Office of observed NAO up to this year, showing the increase referred to plus a further increase into this year; but then a forecast to drop to essentially 0 over this winter.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/seasonal/regional/nao/index.html
Here’s a chart of winter AO up to winter 07/8
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/climate-ao.shtml
Note winter 07/8 was also quite strongly positive.
But here’s observations for the last few months
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index.html
i.e. trending at essentially zero.
Unfortunately I can’t find an authoritative forecast for AO this winter, but I do know that there is generally accepted to be significant correlation between the two oscillations.
So what we’re left with is a situation where 2008 started with a stack of factors which suggested that if we were at a tipping point, proof would be inevitable over the summer. Minimal perennial ice even compared with March 07, significantly positive NAO and AO, record thin ice by a huge margin. But by the time the Zhang outlook was published at the beginning of August, 2008 was failing to to provide any proof whatsoever. Hence the Zhang prediction that only 2007 weather could now cause 2008 to surpass the 2007 record.
Well as I’ve kept trying to point out again and again, the weather in August WAS comparable to that of 2007, and now I’ve finally got some good evidence of this. RSS August lower troposphere temperatures have just been published, and they show a positive anomaly for 60 to 82.5N of +0.935, which is only fractionally below that of August 07 (+1.02), much higher than the combined June/July 08 average (+0.369 – note RSS and MSU figures are slightly different) and very much higher than the global Aug 08 average (+0.146 which is still quite a bit lower than the +0.367 of Aug 07)
http://www.remss.com/pub/msu/monthly_time_series/RSS_Monthly_MSU_AMSU_Channel_TLT_Anomalies_Land_and_Ocean_v03_1.txt
Considering how cold it’s been over the Alaskan/Canadian/Greenland side of the Arctic in August, I think it’s hard to escape the reality that temperature anomalies were particularly high over the Siberian side of the Arctic.
Yet 2008 STILL defies expectations. Extent remains 8.5 per cent above a year ago as of today, area is at approx 8 per cent higher, and thickness appears to be the same or greater, plus well over half the areas exposed as open water by the end of last summer are now covered in ice again.
Moreover, while 2007 left millions of km2 of essentially open water in which positive sea surface temperature anomalies were able to grow to pretty extreme levels – up to over +7C in the pivotal Chukchi sea area which is closest to the Pacific, and between the East Siberian seas, Beaufort, and Arctic Basin ice edge…
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-070902.gif
… in 2008 the Siberian seas/Chukchi/Laptev were “only just” melted by the warm August weather, leaving a legacy of large expanses of ocean barely above the (saline) freezing point, containing significant clusters of ice removed from the main ice pack e.g. in particular the cluster in southern part of East Siberian Sea, which extends to ~72N on the 165E line of longitude compared with the most southerly ice on that line this time last year at ~83N which is a huge difference, or other clusters too scattered to cross the 15 per cent threshold for ice extent/coverage on some of the satellite images e.g. currently off Point Barrow http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/WIS56CT/20080901180000_WIS56CT_0003950692.gif
Since the seas on the Pacific side of the Arctic ocean are so much colder than this time last year (apart from the southern Beaufort which is currently cooling rapidly in any event) and currently being exposed to below-average air temperatures, it seems likely that the sub-surface waters will have more time to mix with (and hence be cooled by) significantly colder surface waters than they did last year, before overall re-freeze starts insulating them, even with this point almost certainly being earler than last year. Thus it would seem that re-freeze will be more gradual since it will occur as sea temperatures gradually dip below the freezing point over the next month or two, rather than last year when it only happened all of a sudden extremely late once air temperatures had got particularly cold.
See e.g. http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=10&fd=20&fy=2006&sm=10&sd=20&sy=2007
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-071021.gif
and
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=10&fd=20&fy=2007&sm=11&sd=05&sy=2007
So I would even venture to say that there are now a “stack of factors” (to recycle my earlier phrase) to suggest recovery 08/9 could be significantly stronger than 07/8, rather than representing the wrong side of a tipping point. And of course this is not just a potentially stronger formation of first year ice, but also crucially a step to the next level of recovery since although minimum extent/area this year will be no more than ~10 per cent higher than last year (possibly a lot less than that, let’s wait and see….), all the ice which has survived this season will be a year older at the start of the 2009 melt season, more than compensating for the much-reduced loss of multiyear ice this summer.
#355: “There’s more Arctic ice this year than last year, in context.”
Here’s your implication, in context
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.jpg
Note that the anomaly only dropped below -1.5 this year from August, and was only below -2 for two days (now at ~ -1.9)
The 2007 anomaly continued its drop to -3 in October because of the very anomalously warm seas centered over the Chukchi delaying re-freeze. As I have argued, a repeat of this simply isn’t on the cards this year on current evidence, such that the six-month average anomaly will almost certainly continue to track close to the pre-summer-2007 level of about -1.2 (six months to end April 08 were approx -0.8, and six months to end August 08 were approx -1.0) and if recovery is stronger than in 07/8, the six-month average anomaly could easily be approaching at least pre-2004 levels by next year’s melt season.
RE # 352
Lawrence, you asked:
[What I’m saying is what affect will prolonged periods of an ice free arctic have on the world’s climate???]
That is the question the international climate science community must answer soon and the IPCC report on their findings. Thre is a world of food supply hangin in the balance. I am delighted you asked the question I have been asking the AMS for about four years with no response. Maybe the research is being conducted in secret so as not to shock the commodities traders into pushing grain futures into orbit.
John McCormick
Chris, there is no question about warming shores:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/04/19squaremile-ice-sheet-br_n_123795.html
There is no question about warm air advection from continents. However you need to look at the entire Polar cap, not near one shore or another, also observe what is happening far away from shorelines, look over, under and sideways in the middle and edges of it all. There is room for melting mechanisms we are not aware of, especially since a prominent ice model is off by 30 years.
Simple ice with respect to thermal IR is way more complex than simple sea ice.
Compression is one of them, scattering is another, open water tides breaking off ice shelves another. This year has been cloudier, over all cooler (surface air and sst’s) than last year. Yet the ice has melted just as much or more. I am far more interested in studying what happens when surface air is cooler, especially if melting is just as furious, than simply claiming the obvious… My latest measurements up Here in the Arctic, have shown DWT warmer than last year at the same date. The atmosphere is not a simple structure of gaseous molecules stratified by pressure, its again more complex and therefore difficult to understand, the models will be refined for many years to come. But your analytical approach lacks perspective just like the prominent Ice model does.
Chris, would you call the 10th tallest man in the world “short”?
Mark, judging by his growth in recent decades, would you say he will inevitably be taller than the tallest man by 2013? Or even 2030?
No I shouldn’t engage with this sort of thing. Read what I’ve written, and I’m happy to engage with detailed debate that doesn’t seek to ridicule or pre-suppose that perfectly sensible arguments are wrong.
#359 With the greatest respect, I would say you haven’t addressed what I have been saying. What you say about my arguments is pretty dismissive e.g.
“However you need to look at the entire Polar cap, not near one shore or another, also observe what is happening far away from shorelines, look over, under and sideways in the middle and edges of it all.”
and “…your analytical approach lacks perspective…”
Yet I’ve been going to great trouble to analyse as many different relevant factors (and locations) as possible, and consider all perspectives.
Unlike some who are happy to content themselves with witty one-liners :)
“My latest measurements up Here in the Arctic, have shown DWT warmer than last year at the same date.”
Please elaborate: this could be really interesting and relevant?
I’ve been going to great trouble to analyse as many different relevant factors (and locations) as possible, and consider all perspectives
And yet you seem to be missing the wood for the trees.
1) The ice area this year is at best fractionally greater than last year.
2) We are past the time of year when there should be open surface melt.
From these two fact, we conclude that area measurements should not be thrown off by surface melt and should give a true measure of ice coverage across the Arctic. Thus, the best evidence we have is that approximately the same area of the Arctic is covered by ice this year as last year.
This of course raises the next question – is the ice we have now thinner or thicker than the ice we had last year? We know that the total area is the same, so the only remaining parameter in terms of volume is the thickness.
You are trying to claim two things simultaneously, both of which cannot be true:
A) A large amount of first-year ice has survived the melt, and will mature into multi-year ice over this winter.
B) Overall Arctic ice is thicker this year than last.
As I said in #345, then if there has been increased survival of first-year ice, then there MUST have been an equal loss of multi-year ice, since the total area (first year plus multi-year) is the same.
So, either there has been no increase in survival of first-year ice (i.e. there is the same remaining ice volume as last year despite less favourable conditions for melting), or there has been increased survival of some first-year ice, while the last of the multi-year ice melts out. Neither is a comforting thought.
Isn’t there still open surface melt? The ‘Pole’ cameras have floated well south; the fisheye pointed straight up has liquid water on the lens and you can see the melt ponds around the edge of the image:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np.html
Chris, I would look at the patch of ice West of Wardle island, and marvel at its disappearance now, under less than favorable conditions…
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/Icefilm_Arctic.avi
My data shows ssts below 0 C and surface temperatures around 0…
A DWT is a weighted temperature of the entire atmosphere, while the winter just past was quite cold, DWT’s remained similar to last year.
Implying a shift in heat location, more than a true cooling. This extra heat has never vanished, and therefore might be affecting the melt through thermal IR
emissions feedback between the ice and the warmer layer. I would concentrate on how the melt is progressing rather uniformly now throughout the ice cap, at all locations not subject to floes, rather than concentrate on one location or another.
RE #359. Trying to get some traction on this rather slippery issue …
Examining the satellite image series, one can draw two inferences. The first is that the Arctic Ocean is a rather closed regional sea (which is not at all intuitive for people not using the polar map projection). The second is that ice boundary on the Atlantic side has hardly moved, which tells that warming of the Atlantic (or changes in the thermohaline circulation there) is not the reason for the observed anomalous melting.
Patterns of melt during June 2007 left an impression that the Bering straits could play a role. The Bering sea ((northernmost part of the Pacific) was anomalously warm. The strait is narrow (60 km) and shallow (50 m) and a prevailing current of 1 m/s northwards is maintained (though winds may reverse its direction temporarily). It syphons warm surface water into the Arctic Ocean, and this was clearly seen as a plume during the early stages of melting. Another plume was generated by the Lena river bringing water from the rather hot Siberian plains. Both plumes stay for some time on the surface as they are formed of warm and low salinity water, but are gradually mixed to some depth (depending on wind speeds). Heat due to solar radiation is also mixed in the same process.
Consider next the Arctic Ocean circulation pattern, as shown in
http://polardiscovery.whoi.edu/arctic/circulation.html
The anomalous melting is located over the Beaufort Gyre. The Gyre is wind driven. Somewhere it was stated that it can at times flip its direction of rotation due to a suitable wind pattern, which might explain the substantial differences between 2007 and 2008 behaviours.
Autumn ice cover changes the below-surface dynamics radically. Notably, wind effects diminish. Further mixing in the surface layer is reduced (if not stopped). Also the force maintaining the Beaufort Gyre drops. Even under the ice cover, the Bering Strait and the Lena river continue to supply some relatively warm and low salinity water. Possibly a lot of heat is trapped under the ice in a shallow (100 m ?) surface layer.
Come spring 2008, the melting started again and winds reinforced the surface mixing process. Winds dredge a part of the stored heat to the surface, reinforcing the other active (meteorology) processes. Melting this year was slower – presumably because of less favourable weather conditions (more clouds, lower solar input). With time, stored heat from the water surface layer was able to overcome the deficit and about the same area of melting was finally achieved. Maybe this also explains why melting continues despite air temperatures falling slightly below zero C.
Obviously, the polar cap has a peculiar role in cooling the Earth during a hemisphere winter. Energy radiated out is mainly transported by winds from the outside. Ice and snow are pretty good insulation materials and heat flow from the sea water (or glacier interior) is limited.
It is another matter how the global warming cascades down to influence this process. Surely it does…
Unfortunately, quantitative modeling of the above is well beyond my skills and capacities.
#362 Peter:
Ice area as measured at Cryosphere today is currently 3.279 million km2 (and has gone up for each of the last 3 days incidentally), that’s ~ 10 per cent higher than this day last year and ~13 per cent higher than last year’s minimum. I suspect that the true difference in ice area is even higher due to surface melt issues, but I can’t prove it. Furthermore, I would be willing to bet quite a lot of money that the true difference is even higher still due to a substantially greater area at greater than 0 and less than 15 per cent concentration ice this year, both multiyear and first year ice. The ice tongues at the western and eastern sides of the Beaufort Sea would be cases in point.
But in any event, even if CT is spot-on, you are the one who can’t see the wood for the trees. Let’s say total ice in the core Arctic area (say within the average summer extent minimum area lines of the last 3 decades) = t, oldest ice = o, intermediate-aged ice = i, second year ice = s, and first year ice = f
In 2007, the minimum extent was much lower (26.4 per cent to be precise) than that of 2006 – http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=09&fd=15&fy=2006&sm=09&sd=15&sy=2007
In other words it seems very little first year ice from winter 2006/7 survived the summer 2007 melt. Since one year’s survived first year ice becomes the next year’s second year ice, the 2008 melt season started with very little second year ice. Furthermore summer 2007 saw a huge loss of multiyear ice and dramatic thinning of all ice.
Thus at the start of 2008 melt season, t = o [very low, and thickest ice] + i [very low, and quite thin ice] + s [very low, and thin ice] + f [very high, and very thin ice]
Between September 2007 and 2008, t [minimum] appears to have increased by at least ~ 10 per cent (subject to the chance of further reductions in the next couple of weeks). Of this 10 per cent, I would subdivide it as follows, assuming that the labels refer to what each type of ice will be at the following season:
o: fractional net increase [small amount of o melted, fractionally higher amount of i becomes o; ice becomes thicker overall e.g. http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil/sid/IMB/2007J.htm
i: fractional net increase as with o [s has become i; ice becomes thicker overall]
s: LARGE INCREASE [all survived f has become s; ice becomes thicker overall]
f: this will simply be t minus o, i and s therefore it ought to see a decrease slightly smaller in magnitude than the increase in s
Thus at the start of 2009 melt season, t = o [fractionally higher than a year ago, and thicker ice] + i [fractionally higher than a year ago, and thicker ice] + s [much higher than a year ago, and substantially thicker ice] + f [lower than a year ago, and almost certainly thicker if autumn 08 re-freeze turns out to have set in earlier than in autumn 07]
I think you’ll find the balance of f and s is crucial, especially if you include s in the definition of multiyear ice. And this is before we start talking about relative loss rates of multiyear ice through the Fram Strait in summer 07 vs 08, or even how much ice all the way down to 1 per cent concentration, and including under melt pools, there really is now compared to a year ago.
Or to put it another way, even a 10 per cent increase in multiyear ice is significant (because the extra 10 per cent of ice this year will NOT be first year ice next year, but second year ice!)
#364 “I would concentrate on how the melt is progressing rather uniformly now throughout the ice cap, at all locations not subject to floes, rather than concentrate on one location or another.”
I find it hard to discern, never mind concentrate on a uniform melt when area has increased for the last 3 days and extent has increased today after a minimal drop yesterday.
Further note re: extent for those into long term trend extrapolation. Official extent (i.e. greater than 15 per cent coverage) is currently 8.8 per cent more than the equivalent date in 2007, an INCREASE from 6.9 per cent ahead on the 2nd July.
Chris,
I agree that as the waters are not as warm it’s possible that we may see an earlier and wider freeze than last year. However the Circum Polar Flaw Lead Team (ARCUS May) found that a significant factor in the delayed melt and late year low areal anomaly in the Beaufort Sea were storms fed by water vapour from the sea. Even without ocean warming as substantial as 2007 we may still see the role of thin ice being a factor in such storms once again preventing ice. Note that the current Beaufort Sea SST anomaly is of the order of +4 or +5 degC over a much greater area than last year.
The claim that this year should have caused a massive reduction in perennial ice.
Initial qualitative evidence will come as the Arctic cools down and less water vapour allows the first year and multi-year ice to be distinguished on QuikScat. After March 2009 Nghiem should produce his extent for that time – which will be comparable with the 2007 paper. Last year was exceptional (NSIDC Sea Ice News 2007), perennial loss this year will not be as large, but I think it will probably still be down due to:
– the melt in Beaufort/Chucki; timeseries of QuikScat shows the perenial break off from Banks Island in January 2008 was broken up and dispersed into the pack area of Beaufort Chucki where much of it melted out. This region visibly seems to represent a substantial chunk of the first year ice area around the pole (QuikScat day 71 2008).
– the loss through Fram Strait; NSIDC Sea Ice News and QuikScat/Bremmen AMSRE timeseries.
My point in presenting Nghiem 2007 remains – between 2005 and 2006 there was an increase in minimum area/extent, yet from March 2006 to March 2007 the perennial extent fell. There was no recovery, which seems contrary to your claim we should expect a recovery. In the years since 2002 there have been earlier and later freezes, and higher and lower extents from year to year, but there has been a persistent perennial loss.
This August is not the same as last year.
The key factor last year was a persistent anticyclone that compounded initial thinning caused by a storm (NSIDC Sea Ice News 2007, 10 Sept 2007, fig 4 & text). What warmed the ocean was that solar heating of the ocean under relatively clear skies, not just sensible warming, but also latent heat warming (which would appear in the troposphere). This year much of the most interesting melt zones have been covered by cloud, so it’s been damned hard to get a grip on what has been going on under the cloud – I know I’ve been trying. The rapid “catch up” in early August also involved an anticyclone, but this time it was not an increase in insolation that caused the rapid drop, it was atmospheric heat flux and winds dispersing ice (NSIDC Sea Ice News 11 Aug 2008).
So I do not see any reason to see the weather of this year or this August as similar to the weather of last year. This has been a year of weather fairly condusive to formation and survival of ice (unlike 2007), yet we are within a small margin of last year, and the reduction in both area and extent continues to catch up on last year.
Concerns about a tipping point are not limited to the recent years.
The reasoning is far more involved than just looking at the detail from one year to the next (although that is crucial for testing ice-models) e.g. The Thinning of Arctic Sea Ice, 1988–2003: Have We Passed a Tipping Point? Lindsay & Zhang, Journal Of Climate 15 Nov 2005.
Further note following previous post #366: I would also strongly re-iterate my arguments in #356 (which took me a lot of time and trouble to write!) re: how 2008 has defied expectations, and re: the likely greater strength of recovery in 2008/9 compared with 2007/8.
A further note to Peter: do not underestimate how thick first year ice can quickly become e.g. see the following buoy installed in 2m thick first year ice on 4th April 08.
http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil/sid/IMB/2008B.htm
The ice has failed to get any thinner than 2m in the meantime, thus it is set up to become a respectable thickness this winter as it enters its second year. And remember that we are told average ice thickness at the end of summer 07 was 1.3m. Thus we only need the average at end of summer 08 to be 1.43m for ice volume to have increased by 10 per cent (even if 2007 and 2008 ended up with identical minimums in extent/area)
#367 It seems to me that the openness (and obvious warmth) of the Siberian seas was far more relevant to the late refreeze last year than the state of the Beaufort – see e.g. http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=10&fd=15&fy=2006&sm=09&sd=15&sy=2007
This year the anomaly in the south central Beaufort may be currently slightly higher (~1C), but it is dwarfed by the extra magnitude by which much larger areas are cooler (e.g. Chukchi ~4C, East Siberian ~3C and these are precisely the areas whose warmth delayed the refreeze last year). In any event, take a look at current temperatures in the Beaufort – you will see that the anomaly peak you refer to is surrounded by a “triangle” of 0C waters surprisingly close – and likely to impinge further given the forecast for the next couple of weeks.
http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/data/analysis/351_100.gif
I’ve explained why I don’t think that an analysis of all relevant figures and averages for extent and area between 2005 and 2006 should have led one to expect a recovery then.
I fundamentally disagree with you about the August weather. It’s very simple: there was an anticyclone over the Beaufort, low pressure to the mid-north of Russia, with persistent southerlies being fed in between producing the perfect cocktail for ice melt consisting of high temperatures, southerly winds and sunshine over a massive swathe of the Siberian coasts. This is in no way consistent with the NSIDC News of 11th Aug which I read at the time.
Re: the future I guess we’ll just have to wait and see :)
#367: A very final point – it might be stating the obvious, but average ice thickness can increase between two years even as minimum extent DECREASES e.g. ice thickness increased between winter 2003/4 and winter 2004/5 (lower minimum extent in summer 2004 compared with summer 2003) This is because the AVERAGE extent and area, especially over the summer months, are more important than some may be willing to recognise.
I’m about to go away on holiday, so please don’t read anything into my silence :) Good luck to all in getting to the bottom of the Arctic conundrum, whatever your point of view.
Note that NSIDC now has another update, with relatively full commentary on the August developments.
Again I stand amazed, the thinning of the ice is wider everywhere,
click on ice thickness:
http://seaice.bplaced.net/gfs.html
yet temperature anomalies are more or less not so hot with temperatures around 0 C….
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/rnl/sfctmpmer_07a.rnl.html
Actually just one very very final point before i go.
In #369 this was a typo: “…This is in no way consistent with the NSIDC News of 11th Aug which I read at the time…” It should have read that my analysis was in no way “inconsistent” with the NSIDC news.
However, anyone with a fine eye for detail may spot that there could indeed be a potential inconsistency. I referred to high pressure over the Beaufort in Aug, whereas NSIDC update of 4th Sep referred to high pressure over the Chukchi. In fact it was fairly equally over both, so you could refer to it being over either sea and still be right http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/fnl/slp_01_30frames.fnl.anim.html
Sorry if this is splitting hairs, but I hate to see good arguments being wasted because I haven’t pre-empted where minor flaws could be highlighted.
Also here’s an interesting link from the NSIDC, showing how the extra heat in the central Beaufort in Aug 08 (up to 2C higher) was dwarfed by a decrease of up to 4C over much wider areas on the Chukchi and Siberian side.
http://www.nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20080904_Figure4.jpg
So long…….
Almost…. Just read #372. You need to put thickness in context, not to mention the limitations of using satellite data to estimate it. Even taking the data at face value, the central Arctic area looks pretty much unchanged since a month ago, with thickness still greater than 1.5m throughout, and losses of no more than 0.2m. As for the periphery, I simply do not accept the maps’ suggestion that ~ 1 million km2 within the periphery has thickness of less than ~20cm. It simply doesn’t work like this – the ice doesn’t start at one cm at the edge and take up to a hundred miles to reach a thickness of more than 20cm. Check out the detailed Canadian ice service reports and their description of the ice off Alaska (much of which doesn’t even show at all on the satellite images, yet much of which is still-thick old ice), check out the buoys, even check out Lewis Pugh the kayaker’s report of getting stuck in “only” 1m thick (new) ice (at at least 80 per cent concentration) at 80.5N just north of Spitzbergen which shows as ~15cm thick on the most recent of your thickness maps. Even consider the main satellite pictures to see how misleading the thickness maps can be e.g. the latter show a significant area of zero thickness at ~155E on the Siberian side inside of the 80N latitude line yet the main AMSR-E picture from the same date shows the same area as virtually all being at least 50 per cent concentration ice, which I would be absolutely amazed to discover to be less than say at least 50cm thick.
As for the temperatures, maybe take a more appropriate animation from the same site and let people make up their own mind which side of the approx -2C threshold for ice melt the average air temperatures have been on the peripheries of the Arctic in the last week.
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/fnl/sfctmpmer_01.fnl.anim.html
Once again, so long……….
I don’t think that the GDAS/GFS ice thickness analysis uses any recent satellite or other observational data. It’s just a modelled thickness, derived from atmospheric conditions during the last months (or even years). And the model isn’t very sophisticated. Especially, it doesn’t include any ice movements.
Occasionally, the ice thickness is reset to zero because of missing ice concentration data that is misinterpreted as no ice. The triangle of near-zero ice thickness in the Chukchi Sea pointing towards the pole that is still present, originated 5 months ago. Some of the holes near the pole result from missing or wrong data from more than 1 year ago.
It seems that the model has been set up with some climatology data when it started (in 2005) and runs autonomously since then (assuming stationary ice). Alignment with reality only happens when the ice concentration at a point goes down to zero.
But the data are still useful for relative changes of thickness; the absolute thickness is only a rough estimate. However, the model seems to underestimate ice loss at clear sky conditions in summer and/or overestimate it under clouds.
The (incomplete) NOMADS GDAS archive has ice thickness data going back at least 1½ years. I plan to set up a long term animation the next days or weeks.
Chris wrote in 373:
That would mean going from 1.7 meters to 1.5 meters with only a 12% loss.
You may wish to look at the following numbers which I gleened from measurements on the ground represented on a map at the following webpage:
August 25, 2008
Arctic shortcuts open up; decline pace steady
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/082508.html
Thickness before melt season, thickness by August 20th, meters lost at surface, meters lost at bottom, percent lost
3.17 m before, 1.37 m on August 20th, 0.8 surface, 0.9 bottom, 56.8% loss
1.83 m before, 0.43 m on August 20th, 0.5 surface, 0.9 bottom, 76.5% loss
2.13 m before, 1.35 m on August 20th, 0.6 surface, 0.2 bottom, 36.6% loss – the Arctic Basin
1.99 m before, 1.32 m on August 20th, 0.2 surface, 0.4 bottom, 33.7% loss
2.90 m before, 2.01 m on August 20th, 0.6 surface, 0.3 bottom, 30.7% loss
2.92 m before, 2.01 m on August 20th, 0.5 surface, 0.4 bottom, 31.2% loss
2.79 m before, 2.39 m on August 20th, 0.3 surface, 0.1 bottom, 14.3% loss
The map is at the bottom. Judging from the map, the measurements taken are fairly representative of the ice losses throughout the Arctic. Either you should have looked at more recent material (after more of the melt had taken place) or looked for data that was more representative. Incidentally, the melt is still underway — and should remain so until late September or early October.
*
Captcha fortune cookie: crank 31.75
Asked this before and it seemed to get lost. Why has there been little excess melting in the ice north of Europe in the Greenland and Bearing seas?
[Response: Because the dominant drift of the ice is from Siberia across the pole to Greenland where is compresses and is generally much thicker than elsewhere. Therefore as it warms, the Siberian arctic/Beaufort Sea areas are first to go. – gavin]
Clarence , thanks for the clarifications and comments. Can you include total volume estimates with your next displays?
D Price #376:
Here is a link to a site that helped me to ‘see’ the current mess the Arctic ice is in:
http://www.homerdixon.com/download/arctic_flushing.html
This link shows the curculations on the Arctic ocean:
http://nsidc.org/seaice/processes/circulation.html
Now that these huge ice shelfs (Ellesmere Island and Greenland) have fractured from being landfast, will these circulations alter significantly or were these circulations present under landfast ice?
What were circulations like ‘under’ these ancient(?) ice shelfs?
There is so much compaction , from almost all sides of the remaining pack ice, that there should be some significant reductions in extent during the next few days. Polarstern path looks quite interesting;
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/Polarstern_visual.png
it must be surreal, an adventure where no ship has gone before on such an ice free sea.
Sorry to come late to the party, I just stumbled on this fascinating and most instructive blog. My 2c worth re Lovins’ paper on Nuclear Power Illusion:
I thought the French not only get 80% of the electric energy from nuclear, they even manage to sell some of the excess to the Germans and Italians, and especially to the Danish, so they can keep the wind mills moving when the wind stops. So much for the claim that nuclear only works when subsidised. Italians liked it to much that now they are building their own nuclear power stations. And with re. the fear of nuclear bombs, look at the Japanese, the only ones who can really claim the right to be afraid of nukes: they have some 54 rectors in operation, and some 12 in the pipeline. Shall I also mention that the French pay one of the lowest prices for electricity in Europe, and have one of the lowest CO2 per capita in the world? So, Lovins’ illusion sounds more like self delusion
For a comparison of nuclear, wind and solar a la French, I recommend this site (in English)
http://www.manicore.com/anglais/index.shtml
Further to my earlier comment (#380) on Amory Lovins’ article, (suggested by Gavin in #75). Again sorry for being so late with my comments.
I printed Lovins article and I am reading it, slowly. I should say that the writing style in this article is not my favourite. I am a physicist myself, so I am not scared of physics!. The trouble is that this text reads a tad too much as coming from a contrarian. This is not the language of science, in my book at least.
After noting that the closing statement indicates that Lovins has published hundreds of papers and 29 books, I could not help myself, and I did a quick Scopus search under Physical Sciences, Lovins, AB. The search yielded 45 documents (not quite the same as hundreds) and an h-index of 4, excluding self citations. For the non-initiated, h = 4 means that out of the 45 documents in the database, 4 have been cited at least 4 times. In terms of what John Hirsch stated when invented the h-index (Wikipedia), for physicists, a value for h of about 10-12 might be a useful guideline for tenure decisions at major research universities. A value of about 18 could mean a full professorship; 15–20 could mean a fellowship in the American Physical Society, and 45 or higher could mean membership in the United States National Academy of Sciences. To quote from Jim Hansen’s trip report, the Lovins of my search would hardly qualify as a member of the relevant scientific community.
BTW, when I widened the search to Social and Health sciences, the h-number went up to 6, and the number of documents to 60, not much better. A sad case of mistaken identity, perhaps ?
http://scholar.google.com/advanced_scholar_search?q=author:Amory+author:Lovins
Results … about 318 for author:Amory author:Lovins
Thanks H-R, glad to know it wasn’t mistake identity, it was the wrong search engine! Even I look better in Google.
Here is a lovely quote from Lovins:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JZS/is_9_23/ai_n25005319/pg_5?tag=artBody;col1
“Amory Lovins, another critic and one-time British representative of Friends of the Earth, agrees. “If you ask me,” Lovins said in an interview with Playboy magazine in 1977, “It’d be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it.” Ehrlich, Lovins, and almost all of the “green” leadership rightly recognize that nuclear energy would lead to prosperity. From their standpoint, that is the problem.”
And these are some alternative readings of the data Lovins used to produce his paper:
http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2008/06/amory-lovins-and-his-nuclear-illusion.html
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/08/north-pole-notes-continued/#comment-97754
hi does anyone out there know how to make a graph depicting uvb radiation versus latitude
andre grz writes:
Any sextons or deacons?
Results … about 318 for author:Amory author:Lovins
Now go through and count how many of those are duplicate entries. For example, in the first 100 hits there are five entries for “Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution” and seven for “Factor Four: Doubling Wealth-halving Resource Use”
#375 Timothy. I look at the most recent material all the time, whether NSIDC news or buoys. Do I really have to go through all this again? The NSIDC map you refer to took its data from, and only from, the Arctic buoys I have referred to many a time.
http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil/sid/IMB/newdata.htm
It portrayed how much they had melted SO FAR THIS SEASON. To get context, you need to compare to them to their status at the same point last year (if available), and take into account drift, positioning and what type of ice they were installed in.
I already explained the context of the NSIDC map at e.g. #330.
#330:
“….I’ve already gone into a lot of detail on the buoys in previous posts. The only buoys which *appear* to support your point are the two with big yellow bars.
The one (2007E) on the edge of the Beaufort was right on the ice edge, and has drifted into open water, so has obviously seen a lot of bottom melt. Its neighbours show a different story: 2008F at Lat: 76.832 N Long: 139.974 W has still failed to melt to less than 3m thick
http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil/sid/IMB/2008F.htm
and 2007F at Lat: 72.609 N Long: 136.079 W appears to have shown no net melt at all since the start of the year despite substantial southward drift. i.e. still at ~3m thick
http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil/sid/IMB/2007F.htm
As for Buoy 2006C in the central Arctic (i.e. the other one with a big yellow bar), the melt here has been half that in 2007, such that the thickness is identical to a year ago. http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil/sid/IMB/2006C.htm….”
It therefore seems rather bizarre to me, and quite frustrating, that you should claim to be the one most in tune with measurements on the ground, as you stated
“You may wish to look at the following numbers which I gleened from measurements on the ground represented on a map at the following webpage:”
I’ve been following the actual measurements on the ground i.e. the buoy data, as well as other relevant data.
You say:
“Incidentally, the melt is still underway — and should remain so until late September or early October.”
Depends where you look. Not in a large area of the Chukchi Sea – see new ice in light pink http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/WIS45SD/20080907180000_WIS45SD_0003957865.gif
You seem very confident that net melt/compaction will continue until much later than last year.
Let’s see what’s happened so far in September.
On Sep 1st, extent was 7.4 per cent more than a year previously.
Today, at latest data (sep 7th) of 4.75 million km2, it is 7.7 per cent more than a year previously. Or 338,000 km2 greater extent.
Let’s wait and see if your projection of ~4 million km2 at the beginning of Oct, or ~6 per cent less than the 2007 minimum, is really correct. I wouldn’t rule it out completely due to high relative amount of first year ice, the uncertainties of the weather, and the dangers of over-confident forecasting in any event.
But my personal opinion based on all the evidence I see before me, remains unchanged, that there has been a small recovery from last year, and colder sea temperatures mean an earlier re-freeze overall. (N.b. date of minimum extent will be of limited use in judging this)
North Greenland satellite
A great picture to see the situation on Greenland’s northern coast:
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2008247/crefl1_143.A2008247183500-2008247184000.250m.jpg
#380:
thought the French not only get 80% of the electric energy from nuclear, they even manage to sell some of the excess to the Germans and Italians, and especially to the Danish, so they can keep the wind mills moving when the wind stops.
Another way to phrase this could be:
thought the French not only get 80% of the electric energy from nuclear, they are forced to sell some to the Germans and Italians, and especially to the Danish, when supply exceeds demand, and their nuclear plants produce excess energy because they can not be throttled down easily
Furthermore, the fact that the French get 80% of their energy from nuclear does not prove anything. That could be (and probably is) the result of massive government funding, i.e. taxpayer francs and euros.
The main point I took from Lovins article is that no company is prepared to invest in nuclear without significant government backing. I think this is true, and therefore the bottom line is: nuclear is not economically viable.
That’s of course not to criticise Amory Lovins, about whom I know precisely nothing, just to point out that Google Scholar is, um, not the best tool in the box.
#378 Dan C,
Most of the ice shelves that are going are up against land, such as inlets in Ellesmere Island. So they shouldn’t affect circulation in terms of their physical presence. Furthermore in terms of the overall area of sea ice along the Canadian Arctic Archipelago coast, the addition of fresh water they represent will not be a significant factor.
#365 Pekka Kostamo,
I agree about the addition of fresh warm water from Siberia being a factor to watch. However Gavin’s inline reply to #376 D Price is also what I see as the reason why the losses have been mainly in the Beaufort through to the Laptev Sea.
With regards mixing processes, you may find Yang 2004 “Storm-driven Mixing and Potential Impact on the Arctic Ocean.” of interest, 6.8Mb pdf available from Woods Hole Institute. I had in mind something more apt but can’t recall it, if I can find what I was thinking of I’ll post.
Thanks Anne (#389) for checking my grammar. You are quite right; my assertion does not prove anything. Perhaps, as suggested in another blog, we should just sit back and wait until the French go broke, or better still, stuff it up completely and either melt down France, or die from Leukaemia. Good riddance. After all, they gave us the French Revolution, the metric system, and a few good movies, but nothing else. Next, I suppose the Swedish and Belgians should go: they get more than 50% of their electricity from Nuclear. How about the Finish? The French are building one of their own reactors for them. Again this proves nothing, except that the French are very cunning. So, then again, maybe Nuclear is viable after all…?
Lovins, reluctantly, points out that the overall (in his view) decline in the number of nuclear stations, will be offset by the new ones the Chinese (among others) are building, although he quickly stresses (p.38) that Beijing is also installing significantly more wind power . Maybe this unbalance in installed capacity has something to do with the fact that the loading factor of nuclear stations is 90-95%, while for wind it is only 25-30%? Looks like the smart thing to do. Isn’t this what Dr James Hansen proposes?
This is getting too boring.
Anne, I still have to come across one pro-nuclear guy (or gal) that opposes efficiency, or the extensive use of wind, geo, solar, bio mass, etc., in any form. The antinuclear Greens make a sad mistake in alienating the pro-nuclear bunch. Together we can make a better world, or at least save our skins. Apart, we all are going to sink in CO2.
lea asks:
Find out what percentage of the solar radiation is in the UV range (I think total UV is abou 7% of incoming solar radiation). Multiply by the solar constant, which averaged around 1,366 watts per square meter for the last 50 years or so. Then apply Lambert’s cosine law:
I = I0 cos(theta)
where theta is the latitude, I0 the illumination perpendicular to the sun (percent UVB x solar constant), and cos is the cosine function.
Then plot I versus theta.
Right, Andre — if Anne says French nuclear is economically inviable without massive government support, she must want to kill all Frenchmen. Thanks for this interesting example of denier reasoning.
P.S. Gavin — I had to click preview six times to get Captcha text I could read. The comment someone else posted in another thread is quite right — Captcha is becoming harder and harder to read.
[Response: Remember that the idea is for you to decode something that OCR wasn’t able to. It’s possible that their pool of needed readings has shrunk to a harder kernel that really are impossible to decipher. I’ll look into it. – gavin]
To Anne (#389), maybe this post will dispel your doubts on the profitability of Areva, the French Nuclear company: their profit for 2008 went up to US$1.2 billion, up from a paltry 295 million euros the year before. Their waste treatment business is also growing.
http://www.macleans.ca/business/wire/article.jsp?content=b0829117A
(You can relax, Barton Paul (#494), and so can everybody in France…). Gosh, you two got me worried: maybe the French nuclear physicists never heard of a little known engineer called Sadi Carnot and were running their highly inefficient nuclear facilities at a loss. BTW, even Lovins has some words of praise for Areva’s achievements (read his paper, it is pretty illuminating, as Gavin said).
Andre Grz,
At what point did I dispute the accuracy of the Carnot thermal efficiency equation? I can’t seem to recall doing that.
“The Arktika-2008 Russian expedition is landing on the drift ice that is home to the Russian Polar Station North Pole-36. The flagship of Russia’s polar research fleet Academician Fedorov is currently located at 82 degrees 34 minutes of North latitude and 171 degrees 52 minutes of East longitude. The equipment disembarkation and camp fixing is due to be followed by a ceremony to open up the station.
03.09.2008”
http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=32018&cid=50&p=03.09.2008
“The researchers spent only two day on the finding of the appropriate ice flow for the mission, far less than last year’s North Pole-35 expedition. The ice floe has a diameter of 6 km and is up to 2,8 meter thick.” http://www.barentsobserver.com/russias-new-arctic-station.4506414.html
Now consider what happened last year:
“When this latest expedition was launched last year at the time of the record melt, it took the team three weeks to find a suitable piece of ice on which to establish a base.
According to Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University, a veteran of Arctic research, the Russians usually prefer to set up their camps on ice at least three metres thick but the thaw was so extensive that they had to settle for a floe that was only around 1.5m thick.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7503060.stm
Last year’s expedition (Sep 07) appears to have been set up at 81 deg 26 North, 103 deg 30 East, i.e. western Laptev Sea close to the Kara.
That’s an area which remained ice-covered at both 2006 and 2007 extent minima, yet the thickest they could find was 1.5m thick.
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsredata/asi_daygrid_swath/l1a/n6250/2006/sep/asi-n6250-20060924-v5_nic.png
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsredata/asi_daygrid_swath/l1a/n6250/2007/sep/asi-n6250-20070924-v5_nic.png
This year’s has been set up at 82 deg 34 N and 171 deg 52 E, i.e. a little way into the Arctic Basin from the East Siberian sea.
This is an area that was open water throughout September 2007, but a year later the Russians have found an ice floe with a diameter of 6km up to 2.8m thick.
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsredata/asi_daygrid_swath/l1a/n6250/2008/sep/asi-n6250-20080909-v5_nic.png
Since there are no buoys on the Siberian side of the Arctic, this is the first measurement “on the ground” (rather than estimated from satellite data, models etc) I have seen from the area in months. And the result seems encouraging.
Certainly the Russians don’t seem concerned about further melt in the area this month – I would say this is fair enough considering that the sea surface temperatures on the new station’s line of longitude are currently at ~ -2C virtually all the way to the Siberian coast.
http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/data/analysis/351_100.gif
Meanwhile, latest thickness data (9th Sep) from buoys used to create NSIDC map of August 20th:
2008E – 1.3m (First year ice, Lat: 83.127 N Long: 3.562 E)
[Showed as 1.32m on NSIDC map]
2008C – 2.7m (Multiyear ice, Lat: 85.114 N Long: 75.591 W)
[Showed as 2.39 on NSIDC map – wrongly?]
2008B – 1.95m (First year ice, Lat: 85.640 N Long: 89.317 W)
[Showed as 1.35 on NSIDC map – wrongly?]
2006C – 1.1m (Multiyear ice, Lat: 84.900 N Long: 137.556 W)
[The thickness shown by buoy 2006C is exactly the same as in Sep 07. Melt has been ONE METRE LESS this year, since thickness was 2.1m at the beginning of summer 08, compared with 3.1m at the beginning of summer 07]
[Showed as 0.43m on NSIDC map – wrongly?]
2007J – 3.3m (Multiyear ice, Lat: 79.269 N Long: 128.851 W)
[This is an INCREASE IN THICKNESS of 0.5 metres since the same date last year]
[Showed as 2.01 on NSIDC map – wrongly?]
2008F – 3.1m (Multiyear ice, Lat: 75.967 N Long: 138.515 W)
[Not shown on NSIDC map]
2007E – 0m (Multiyear ice, Lat: 74.013 N Long: 142.161 W)
[This buoy had been on a 3m thick ice floe which drifted into open water in the Beaufort Sea and melted completely. Thus I’m not claiming it’s all good news!)
[Showed as 1.37 on NSIDC map]
2007F – On edge of Beaufort, data erratic (appears to show increase in ice from 3m last year to 4m this year, but I wonder if the ice underneath has in fact melted causing data to go haywire)
[Not shown on NSIDC map]
2008D – NSIDC showed as 2.01m but no sign of line on graph since initial thickness of 2.95m in April. Graph only goes down to 3m so I wonder if thickness is still below 3m?)
Finally, on a different subject, just wanted to correct something I said in a previous post. It appears NE Canada continued much warmer than average in August, hence further collapse/melt of ice shelves.
http://climate.uah.edu/august2008.htm
[Globe overall showed zero anomaly – thus to what extent were the heatwaves over NE Canada and NE Siberia the result of say jet stream changes perhaps associated with La Nina, rather than the greenhouse effect? Certainly La Nina and a jet stream further south than usual has been blamed for the poor summers here in the UK in 2007 and 2008 – see e.g. below]
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2517868.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article4184163.ece
#395. In Finland, the impression on nuclear energy is that it is currently quite competitive, even at rates somewhat lower than those prevailing in Central Europe. Current discussion does not concern costs, but other aspects of the plant(s). There appears to be commercial interests quite eager to invest in a couple more reactors in addition to the one under construction now, should the politicians agree.
The only public “subsidy” is that a major part of the plant’s risk insurance is carried by the Government. There are laws that limit the liability of commercial operators. That probably is the case in all other countries using nuclear power as well. It is also a debatable issue and it is not known if full scale commercial coverage would be available anywhere.
For better or worse, the Finns have also made a decision on a final repository of nuclear waste. Disposal is supposed to be paid for by a levy on produced energy during a reactor’s lifetime. Together with a quite problem free operation history of the existing 4 reactors in the country, this has moved the public opinion to a neutral or even positive view of this energy option.
AREVA as the primary contractor is losing some money on the prototype in Finland. Apparently their management process has had teething problems, there being little recent experience on such work.
Pekka Kostamo, #398.
So how come paying for the insurance of a private company is not a subsidy? If it is because it isn’t worth much then why not get the company to pay it?
Chris, Its not so simple, the open water off Ellesmere is due in part to the entire ice pack rotating clockwise, nothing new with that except, there is hardly anything stopping it from turning faster.
As far as weather is concerned , again it appeared very strange, incoherent, but cooler is the word in the Archipelago, and therefore the contradiction of the ice being as shrunken as last year.
The latitudinal temperatures switched from warmer in the North, then warmer in the South then again in August warmer in the Northern hemisphere, without much of an explanation possible.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=8&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=06&year1=2008&year2=2008&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
try it for July and August and see… Despite what appears to be significant temperature shifts, the melt for the entire pack is similar to last year (not just one coast or another), indicating thinner ice, and also suggesting some stable under observed warm source.