To avoid being squashed by a falling rock: scream and leap.
To understand gravity: observe, calculate and think.
To accomplish both science and fitness, plan ahead.
Plan better.
I again recommend Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2005 piece in Nature.
… Scientists in their various toothless non-decision-making organizations conclude that the anthropogenically initiated climate change, and mass extinction event associated with it, probably threatens their descendants’ welfare, and thus scientists’ own evolutionary fitness. The sleepers awake….
… An economist suggests that the cost for individual scientists wanting to maintain these benefits could be conceptualized in the form of a mutual hedge fund, with initial investment set for the sake of discussion at $1,000 per scientist.
… modellers debate the numbers, with a biologist pointing out that the benefit of life to every living organism could justifiably be defined as infinity, considerably altering equation’s results….
Conference attendees conclude altruism is probably warranted, and hedge fund is established. (Readers of novel wishing to pre-invest are directed to a website http://www.sciencemutual.net.)….
I know, I know, it just isn’t going to happen. KSR isn’t even going to write the novel, beyond that sketch, nor will we live in that world.
But, hey, early days of, perhaps, a smarter world? Someone should start that thing.
Aaron Lewissays
There is a problem in communication between engineers and scientists.
Consider date of ice loss. Scientists pick dates where they have some certainty that it will already have happened. Engineers pick the last date that they have some certainty that it will not have happened. A compromise would be to pick a date where half of the ice volume of 1900 had been lost, or when half of the functionality of the ice had been lost.
Fifty years of gradual ice decline with maker events in 2007 and 2012, along with changes in the consistency and quality of the tell us that the ice is going. We are somewhere between the scientist’s and the engineers date of ice loss.
When do we say the ice is “gone”? Ten years ago, I would have said, “as determined by satellite extent or area”. Today, I would say, “when it stops condensing water vapor out of the lower Arctic atmosphere.”
Sorry guys, but the sea ice has warmed and cracked enough that there is now significant amounts amounts of latent heat in the lower atmosphere across the Arctic. For its role of condensing latent heat out of the lower atmosphere and radiating that heat into space, the Arctic Sea ice is functionally degraded.
My point is that the sea ice has degraded to the extent that the change in the character of the ice significantly affects the weather in the temperate northern hemisphere. Functionally the ice is highly degraded.
Now, when your car has had a wreck and does not go (is functionally highly degraded), you can still see the hulk, but is it a car or a pile of scrap metal? When your house has been hit by a tornado and roof torn off (functionally highly degraded) is it still a house or is it a pile of scrap wood?
Yes, there is ice floating in the Arctic Ocean, but is it performing the roles that we traditionally expect from the intact Arctic Sea Ice? If it is not doing what we expect sea ice to do, then we have already lost it.
This is not “moving the goal posts.” Goal posts are part of a game. This is situation awareness in a rapidly changing environment.
“interesting in a climate sense, because the amount of sunlight that is being reflected by these clouds is to some extent determined by the number of cloud droplets.
“It ends up being a 60 percent increase in cloud droplets throughout the year, doubling in summer, when the phytoplankton are most active, translating to a 4-watt-per-meter-squared increase in reflected sunlight, and 10-watt-per-meter-squared increase during the summer.”
I 100% buy into arguments that loss of Arctic sea ice is already driving changes in the behavior of weather systems, creating blocking patterns in the jet stream leading to extreme heat waves and drought. (Also causing record cold and snowfall. I live in the northeast US.) I absolutely believe this will only get worse.
As for the ice itself, I think it is reasonably likely that we will have an September average extent of less than 1 million sq km before 2030. If I have to pull a number out of thin air, say 40% chance of at least one year at less than 1 million sq km. Furthermore, at this point reaching 1 million sq km eventually is unstoppable, but we should be doing everything we can to limit the rate at which it occurs, and to stop or slow the melt of the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets.
I think that less than 1 million sq km before 2020 is very unlikely, but not impossible.
1 million sq km this year? Impossible. Furthermore, people like Wadhams making predictions that it will happen this year is harmful, because it’s not believable and it looks like he’s crying wolf.
The ice may be rotten, but his claim is that it is rotten in a way that will cause it to behave in a way that has never been observed before. Wadhams doesn’t have any sort of physical models which can back that prediction up. The question you should ask is if the ice is that rotten, why hasn’t the observed extent loss so far this year reflected that?
If you want to claim that ice will melt for the rest of this year at the same rate as it did in 2012, I don’t think it’s likely, but it’s certainly believable. Melt fast enough to catch up with 2012 and set a new record? Very unlikely. I’ll believe it when I see it. Melt fast enough to get to 1 million sq km? Impossible. Far too far from what we’ve seen before to take seriously.
I’ve arrived here somewhat late in the day via a link from the Arctic Sea Ice Forum. In all the circumstances perhaps I might repeat here what I recently said over there.
In a personal communication Prof. Wadhams informs me that:
“My SIPN prediction is an outlier but it is in fact what is predicted by the 5-year trend in ice volume in September. In 2013 and 2014 the volume in summer came in above this trend, but since then we have started a new El Nino which tends to increase air temperatures more. I am just staking this area out as a marker, and expect to be shot down in flames”.
[Response: Of course he will be. This is posturing, not science. – gavin]
Not sure if that’s the identical product, but it doesn’t matter much for present purposes.
Generic Readersays
(Apologies if a variant of this already got posted; I can’t see it, or any indication that it’s in moderation.)
Fix my amateur estimate please.
* Today we have 120 extra ppm of CO2
* …which has yielded today’s global temp rise (ignoring future warming that’s locked in.)
* The new Dutton et al. Science paper estimate has today’s temp alone corresponding, roughly, to a sea level that’s 6m (19.6 feet, = 236 inches) higher than today’s. (sciencemag.org/content/349/6244/aaa4019.abstract)
* 236/120ppm = 2 inches expected SL rise per added ppm CO2, underestimated.
* Current CO2 rise is 2.11ppm/year (2005-2014, co2now.org/Current-CO2/CO2-Trend/acceleration-of-atmospheric-co2.html )
* So each year we’re adding 4 inches (2.11*2) to the ultimate sea level rise, which again doesn’t count rise from the in-the-pipeline future warming from atm. CO2 already present. Can this be factored in?
Alastair McDonaldsays
OSweetMrMath wrote “And the numbers say this prediction is not credible.”
But where do the numbers come from? Have you not heard the expression “Past performance is no guarantee of future results”?
Have a look here: http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.uk/ and you will see there is a large area in the Beaufort Sea about to disappear which will easily produce a loss of over 150,000 sq km per day.
Alastair McDonaldsays
Generic Reader,
Earth System Science is not linear, and you cannot work out sea level rise from CO2 rise. It is a chaotic relationship. For instance,when the Arctic sea ice melts, which it will do at 400 ppm CO2, then the warm Arctic will melt the Greenland ice sheet even faster adding ~7m to sea level even if CO2 stays at 400 ppm.
Nightvid colesays
I am very disappointed in most of the models for underestimating the impact of June snow cover on Arctic sea ice on the final September extent. In most of the models, years like 2012 seem to be caused more often by other factors, while those seem to grotesquely mis-predict the shape of the ice pack.
If you actually look at June snow cover, it has a surprising ability to relate to not only the September extent but also to the shape of the ice pack. For this reason, I submitted my prediction of 3.26 M km^2 to the SIPN netowrk, which is based on a linear regression of September extent against snow cover on Arctic sea ice on June 13th of each year.
Other apparent correlations, such as with April or May modelled ice volume, I would argue, are less compelling, because they fail to predict the shape of the ice pack.
I have a now-longstanding argument with Chris Reynolds about the impact of snow retreat on ice retreat. He remains convinced that a 2m-thick ice pack in spring will not melt dramatically in summer no matter how aggressive the June snow melt over the Arctic sea ice is in a given year.
Yet he is basing this on PIOMAS, which has no melt ponds and never drops the albedo of concentrated pack ice below 65%. For these reasons I find Chris’s “slow transition” argument incredibly uncompelling.
If I want to get a dataset of mean temperature for each month for each year for a single specified weather station over a specified 30+ year period (like this: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/NH.Ts+dSST.txt ), where do I find the data?
At ncdc.noaa.gov I can request a single year of data for the weather station, but since it’s a climate data center, there must be a way to get data for a multiyear period.
p.s. I’m not a robot, but please don’t make me crave steak. Pictures of anything else are fine.
Killiansays
#256 Kevin McKinney said “Seas will continue to warm for centuries even if manmade greenhouse gas emissions were frozen at today’s levels, say US government scientists…”
Well, duh! Freezing emissions at today’s levels would clearly still mean increasing concentrations… Has anyone ever said anything different?
Huh. I had interpreted that to mean concentrations were frozen at today’s levels, but you may be right. The context was they also ran a simulation with atmospheric C back at pre-industrial levels (something I had sought for years), resulting in cooling, and stabilization of the ice sheets (something I had hypothesized for years) in surprisingly short time frames, so I took the “freeze” to be ppm. If you’re right, then it truly is a “Doh!” moment, and a pointless study, really. Well, except for that return to pre-industrial part, which is AWESOME!
I don’t think anyone but myself realizes the implications of this study. It’s the most important climate study ever, imo.
Killiansays
#158 Generic Reader said * So each year we’re adding 4 inches (2.11*2) to the ultimate sea level rise, which again doesn’t count rise from the in-the-pipeline future warming from atm. CO2 already present. Can this be factored in?
I’m not a math guy, but I would point out the effect is almost certainly a rising parabolic curve, i.e. exponential. Your average will be ever rising. At least, until you reach diminishing returns with ice mass and melt falls due to falling volumes of ice left to melt.
Hubbert’s curves for oil might be a rough analogue, particularly the more shark finned examples.
You can certainly see that some hefty chunks of most likely multi-year ice have already melted out of the Beaufort Sea, but I have to say that it’s a bit of a stretch to then claim that the “Beaufort Sea will easily produce a loss of over 150,000 sq km per day”!
What will you do if the reality ultimately “shoots you down in flames”?
Re Gavin says: 19 Jul 2015 at 4:12 PM
What do you make of Prof. Wadhams work on “waves-in-ice”? I ask because I’ve just reported on the most recent such event (that I am aware of):
Methane is a significant issue. However I agree with Dr Archer when he states it is more likely to be chronic rather than catastrophic. The main issue being it will exacerbate what is already going on with human emissions.
Prof Wadhams prediction has caused so much puzzlement that even the SIPN organisers felt it necessary to address it in their June Summary. See the final paragraph of Current Conditions, here: http://www.arcus.org/sipn/sea-ice-outlook/2015/june
I note that you commented over at Nevens blog in the very same thread where Larry Hamilton expressed puzzlement. Then I suggested it might be a benchmarking exercise. Then I had to retract that after seeing the video of Prof Wadhams saying that disapearance of the ice by September ‘could easily happen this year or in the next couple of years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8xdOTyGQOso
Latest thing is that it seems it was a benchmarking exercise, as Jim Hunt has repeated here, but oriiginally posted here: http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1149.msg57191.html#msg57191
Note that Prof Wadham’s was the first summary of the other SIPN participants for June that I read, it didn’t answer my questions.
Not being persuaded that the statistical extrapolation method tells us anything about sea ice, I haven’t really followed it much. But I think the original prediction was something like 2015 +/-3 years. I am as sceptical about 1 million kmsq minimum by 2018 as I am about it this year, excluding some form of extreme event causing loss of ice e.g. a meteor strike on the Arctic Ocean in May.
#147 Chuck Hughes,
Yet there is nothing about this year that we haven’t seen before. Even the recent above average loss of sea ice is arguably due to the emergence of the Arctic Dipole. The idea of a crash to around 1 million kmsq within a few years demands that we see indices that are strongly outside of the envelope of past behaviour. Needless to say one does have to concentrate on the post 2007 period as a benchmark for such behaviour, yet even with that allowance, the pack is _not_ behaving abnormaly. Everything points to a September minimum within the range of 2007 to 2014 minimae, and the continued picture of decades of preconditioning through volume loss (which has come from loss of older thicker ice) plus weather, the same story of every year from 2007 to 2014.
1) I cannot say anything more than I have already said. Your claimed link relies on three years of data, you’ll need more years to make the link stronger.
2) This discussion is not about the ‘slow transition’ idea which is based solely upon the maintenance of winter volume.
3) In this document (page 27): http://web.whoi.edu/famos/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2014/06/FELTHAM_FAMOS_talk_ponds_2014.pdf
Feltham notes that:
“Even with no change in radiative forcing, atmospheric or oceanic conditions, the change in sea ice topography alone will result in greater sea ice melt.”
This is indeed found in PIOMAS, as evidenced by the 2007 and 2010 volume loss events.
However as that document shows, and as the 2012 melt season showed, melt pond distribution is already approaching a limit (page 28). One cannot go over ‘1’ in a normalised melt pond fraction.
3) PIOMAS includes an albedo dependence upon snow cover, as is shown in Flato & Hibler 1995, eqn A3. http://www.ccpo.odu.edu/~klinck/Reprints/PDF/flatoJGR95.pdf
This is referenced in Zhang & Rothrock 2001 “A Thickness and Enthalpy Distribution Sea-Ice Model”.
Note that the assumption used is that albedo’s dependence on snow cover is linearly related to ice thickness (up to a limit above which 100% snow cover is assumed). Furthemore PIOMAS uses an albedo of 0.75 for ice, which drops to 0.65 for wet ice (Flato & Hibler table 2). This would go some way towards explaining the behaviour noted in point 3 above, and to explaining why PIOMAS does so well despite not including melt ponds.
While not producing albedo as low as melt ponds (Perovich & Polashenski, 2012, “Albedo evolution of seasonal Arctic sea ice.”) http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8452/8030738470_b90a73494c.jpg
PIOMAS does include albedo changes with the season and with ice thickness.
Briansays
#165 It is more complex than that. The decay of the Greenland and Antarctic ice removes overburden that will be compensated for by isostatic uplift, and as the volume of rock doesn’t change this will lead to subsidence in the areas surrounding the decaying ice. I would expect the continental shelves surrounding these ice caps to subside by about 40% of the volume of ice lost so the sea level rise will be reduced by at least part of that amount, by a falling parabolic curve.
As a math guy, I should point out that this is incorrect: “a rising parabolic curve, i.e. exponential”.
Parabolic curves are graphs for quadratic formulas such y = x ^ 2.
In contrast, an exponential function would have a form such as y = 2 ^ x.
This seemingly minor change is actually quite huge.
Any exponential function (including, say y = 1.00000001 ^ x) will eventually and permanently outgrow any polynomial function (including, say y = x ^ 999999999) for values of x beyond some threshold.
Polynomial growth can be fast, but exponential growth (even if it seems to start slowly) dramatically shoots off the charts.
[end pedantry]
Note: my comment was entirely on that one phrase — I’m not making any claims about the phenomenon you guys were discussing.
K: I don’t think anyone but myself realizes the implications of this study.
BPL: You’re a legend in your own mind.
James McDonaldsays
A question to anyone expert in this area: is the following a good way to conceptualize the positive feedback caused by H2O? It makes sense to me, but I’ve had trouble finding any online explanations quite like it.
—
We can define several “tops of the atmosphere” where longwave photons escape from an inner realm to an outer one — one outermost top for all the non-condensing gases such as CO2 or CH4, where the photons make a final escape to space, and an inner top for each codensing gas such as H2O where longwave photons make their final escape from that gas to an outer region. (In practice, H2O is probably the only consensing gas that matters.)
Increasing CO2 traps more energy below the outer top for non-condensing gases, and the consqeuent increased atmopsheric H2O then traps yet more energy below the inner top for H2O, amplifying the original warming with a postive feedback.
The net warming would then depend (among other things) on the fraction of photons that escape directly to space from an H2O vs. CO2 molecule. The closer that is to zero, the simpler the model is.
So two additional questions:
Is that fraction known?
Would a higher fraction lower climate sensistivity? (Reasonaing that if the final escape was sometimes from an H2O molecule, adding more CO2 would be adding proportionately less to the total pool of molecules regulating the final escape.)
—
Pardon my ignorance if this all explained cleary somewhere. Then a pointer would suffice…
#156,164–The Guardian story linked has a different quote: ““Even if we were to freeze greenhouse gases at current levels, the sea would actually continue to warm for centuries and millennia, and as they continue to warm and expand the sea levels will continue to rise…””
Probably a headline-writing editor was responsible for confusing emissions and concentrations.
Alastair McDonaldsays
Jim (Hunt)
You wrote “I have to say that it’s a bit of a stretch to then claim that the “Beaufort Sea will easily produce a loss of over 150,000 sq km per day”!”
Then you asked “What will you do if the reality ultimately “shoots you down in flames”?” In that case I will breathe a sigh of relief, but what will you do if Nature proves Prof. Wadhams and me correct?
I’ll say again “Earth Science is not linear.” The realisty of sea ice is that one year you get a small change in extent, the next you get a new record follwed by a partial recovery. But if too much ice melts then it won’t recover. That is what we face. One season fairly soon the ice will melt and stay melted.
The se ice is controlled by the ice albedo effect, whichis a positive feedback. It there is no sea ice there then the feedback cannot operate and the Arctic Ocean will remain ice free.
Edward Greischsays
157 Kevin McKinney http://polarportal.dk/en/havisen-i-arktis/nbsp/sea-ice-temperature/
Some open water and the ice temperature is no more than 10 below Centigrade at this time. A lot of the ice is slushy wet or close to it. The ice is not the barrier to navigation that it used to be. An ice breaker would be overkill. While avoiding the big icebergs, I think many ships could go mostly wherever they want to in the Arctic ocean today.
The Arctic ocean is on the edge of being ice free. It is going to be a matter of definition. Is it ice free when 10% of all commercial ships can make it to all Arctic ocean ports without an ice breaker? I doubt that we would require the very last ice cube to be gone before calling it “ice free.”
Killiansays
#168 Hank Roberts said … a rising parabolic curve, i.e. exponential….
Apples and oranges
Thanks, peanut! Guess I shoulda paid more attention in math… alas…
siddsays
I see that Prof Rahmstorf is an author of a paper with Hansen on large sea level rise. Perhaps he could comment on it?
Another interview with Doug Peacock ended with a 20 year end of civilization and all the ice sheets melting. He said scientists are afraid to tell us the truth. I think not on both counts. He’s a friend of this guy.
Because it’s public material, right? So people were planning to work with it as quickly as possible. All the multispectral imagery, I’d hope, not just the three color frames to combine as a visible color image.
The delivery: “The NASA satellite will snap a selfie of Earth every day, the space agency says, and it will post them to a dedicated page by September.”
Because the Air Force owns it now? What’s the original resolution being captured for each wavelength? And what do we get to see and when?
What would be sensible criteria for classifying someone as a climate policy expert, and why is there no equivalent of Real Climate (and its comments section) for policy?
Digby Scorgiesays
The Arctic is certainly coming in for a great deal of attention. Everyone seems to be waiting with bated breath for the day the Arctic Ocean runs out of ice. But one should not forget the Antarctic; the situation there is equally dire, if not quite as visible. In this regard I have an anecdote that might be of interest.
I was a member of the eleventh South African expedition to Antarctica in 1970. Our minimum temperature for the year was -50 degrees Celsius in August. Our average temperatures for the winter months were -26 in June, -31 in July and -32 in August. According to our meteorologists these temperatures were typical of that era.
Our base was near the edge of the ice shelf. The current South African base is on an escarpment in the mountains further south. One would therefore expect their temperatures to be lower than ours. One would be wrong.
A former team-mate in regular contact with the current base mentioned in an e-mail last year that the minimum temperature for 2014 was -35 degrees. Not only that, but in recent years the annual minimum has been typically in the range from -28 to -35. This is not too different from our average winter temperatures. I was shocked. This little corner of Queen Maud Land appears to have experienced 15 degrees or more of warming. One wonders about the rest of the continent.
Zacharysays
Hello RealClimate team, new research published by a former peer at nasa states a new dire look on sea level rise.
It also disagrees with your 2 degree limit goals.
Are one of your peers at real climate going to respond to this claim or are you inclined to agree?
Since Hank mentioned Kim Stanley Robinson recently, I thought I’d share a bit of an article in Monday’s Sacramento Bee about his newest novel. Stan, an award-winning science fiction writer, wrote a three-part trilogy on climate change as well as a similar three-book series on colonizing Mars.
“Robinson’s new novel is “Aurora,” about a colonization mission to a fictitious Earth-size moon orbiting the actual Planet E, which orbits the real star Tau Ceti, 11.88 light years from Earth (Orbit, $26, 480 pages). To make sure his scenario was scientifically solid, he consulted experts at NASA’s Ames Research Center.
“Q: But what if we could get to another planet for colonization?
“A: This is a mistake because there’s no place other than Earth where humanity can be healthy and safe. When we land on another planet, we’ll find out if it’s either alive or dead. It it’s alive, we’ll be in trouble because the life that’s there already will either make us sick or kill us. If it’s dead, we’ll have to terraform it, in which case we’ll die before it’s ready.”
Stan (who I am fortunate to have as a neighbor and a friend) understands the difference between science and science fiction.
I am not surprised that sea ice has dominated the discussions recently. As always, I’ll agree with Gavin about Wadhams (I don’t think I have ever read Dr Schmidt commit anything erroneous but typos!), but until I get answers from Peter about how he got to formulate his projections, Dr Wadhams does not his science work a favour.
Is also good to read about Aaron Lewis work, which sadly I still have not seen any models output, like the one from England, which actually placed sea ice results on animation sequence maps and placed 2007 minima in 2038! I admired the Met office braveness and very scientific approach for at least publishing their results, it was a start. There are many people who can help out the problem they have with sea ice projections (I sound like a scratched cd repeating this lament for years), and like Wadhams, I don’t think that not publishing results from runs is a good way to correct potential errors.
Not only about sea ice of course, but also high resolution lower upper temperature profile forecasts as well, in particular the first 50 meters with emphasis on the first 3 meters above surface. I have come up with a flawless refraction method which may verify any temperature profile forecast instantly, but these potent observations can’t be useful for the models if we never can compare with what they calculate.
Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says the Hansen report is merely “one scenario, and not evidence for that scenario.”
Schmidt says the study “might add to the discussions” but is far enough from conventional thinking that it is unlikely to change mainstream climate views, international negotiations on reducing carbon, or the IPCC’s recommendations to world governments. <<
If you hunt around in the resources section you will no doubt discover lots of “icecam” images, and also the fact that the ones you mention are now quite some way from the North Pole. Temperature profiles of the ice floe under those cams are available too. The regional graphs will also allow you to determine the current rate of decline of Beaufort Sea ice extent.
Please feel free to give that a try and let us know what answer you come up with.
RC contributors can speak for themselves, but this long-time reader must note that RC has long pointed out how conservative the IPCC has been on sea-level rise.
Also the fact that Eric Rignot, one of the so-authors on Hansen et al., is in fact an RC contributor.
I don’t think RC has ever staked out some kind of ‘official position’ on the 2C limit, though there was that post about the inadvisability of certain alternate metrics that had been proposed.
Alastair McDonaldsays
Re #175
James, there is a good description of how the positive feedback caused by H2O is conceptualised in the current paradigm here: Twomey, S. 1991. ‘Aerosols, Clouds and Radiation.’ Atmospheric Environment. Part A. General Topics 25 (11): 2435–42.‘[PDF] from Ubairpollution.org.’ 2015. Accessed July 9. http://ubairpollution.org/Papers/General_and_Review/twomey1990.pdf.
HTH, Alastair.
Alastair McDonaldsays
Jim,
I have visited your web site “The Great White Con” and skimmed the blog article there. Are you now having second thoughts about the Arctic sea ice melting being a con?
I have been looking at the numbers for Arctic sea ice retreat and over the last few days it has averaged at around -120,000 sq km and is closing in on the 2012 figures. See http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/ This map is probaly the most dramatic with regard to the Beaufort ice, and if it melts soon then it seems likely to me that the the 2015 melt will overtake that of 2012. Of course that does not mean we will have a new record since the August weather will be the decider. 2013 and 2014 were close to 2012 until then.
As you wrote, the North Pole cameras have moved, but they are heading for the Fram Strait exit. It looks as if the whole ice pack is moving with them out of the ocean http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/DriftTrackMap.html which may acount for the lack of ice in the Beaufort Sea.
The “definition” of an ice free Arctic is less than 1 M sq km, which explains Wadhams 0.95 M sq km. He is predicting an ice free Arctic this year. Even if he is wrong this year, if he keeps predicting it he will be correct pretty soon. The point to take is that it is better to panic now than after he has been proved correct.
Don’t listen to the other pundits, they are in denial and think that they can predict a non-linear system using statistical trends.
Zacharysays
193: I’m not saying your wrong but I don’t see that name in the listed contributors. (see below)
I’m also sorry if my initial question came off rude. That was not my intent.
Contributors
Filed under: Contributor Bio’s — group @ 6 December 2004
22
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SUMOME
The current permanent contributors to content on this site are:
Gavin Schmidt
Michael Mann
Rasmus Benestad
Ray Bradley
Stefan Rahmstorf
Eric Steig
David Archer
Ray Pierrehumbert
William Connolley was a contributor, but has now left academia; Jim Bouldin was a contributor from 2009 and Caspar Ammann and Thibault de Garidel were early supporters of the site.
What happens when there is no more ice left in the Arctic for an extended period of time? That’s what I want to know. How much different will things be when that happens as opposed to right now? It seems we’re arguing over some ice cubes. What’s the upshot of no ice in the Arctic? Maybe it’s a few weeks or a month of no ice? What difference will it make as far as weather patterns globally? Any thoughts on that? Thanks.
Pete Bestsays
Re #193, Science is science and 2C is a political position due to the fact that its going to take a long time to get down to 1 ppmv per annum of CO2 from the current 2 ppmv per annum let alone down to zero. As science does more research and discovers that the real differs slightly from the idealised but useful computer model and possibly realises that things are as likely to be worse rather than better than forecast does not really change the political and economic stance on 7 billion humans being desiring growth, prosperity and a better quality of life for themselves and their children. By better quality of life I would imagine it means to live like those in the USA with their incredible 250 KWH per day of energy usage (125 KWh day for the average European) which is not a great position.
The future is bleaker than the present is.
ptricksays
@185 Generic Reader:
> why is there no equivalent of Real Climate for policy?
Because climate scientists have been under attack from blatant bad actors for the science itself–let alone for policy ideas. If less money-is-speech hostility were being thrown at climate science and scientists, they would be freer to contribute more speech-is-speech input on policy analysis, I think.
I’m not a scientist, as I always like to point out but…. I’ve always thought that the ice will melt much faster than anyone has predicted. It doesn’t make sense to me that it would take centuries to see several feet of SLR given how fast we’ve managed to heat things up. I look for many unpleasant surprises in the next few decades and not just with SLR.
I had requested a “worst case scenario” projection in the past. I think it would be very helpful to know ‘what’s the worst that could happen’ in say 30 years? Not because I’m a gloom and doom fan but because IT COULD HAPPEN, right? We need a ‘just in case’ plan of action as opposed to all the rosy optimism of the IPCC reports based on 100 year time scales.
Would it be possible to have an article or two based on a worst case situation, rather than continuing to pretend it won’t happen? Thanks
> It just isn’t going to happen
Well, it is, but not quite yet.
To avoid being squashed by a falling rock: scream and leap.
To understand gravity: observe, calculate and think.
To accomplish both science and fitness, plan ahead.
Plan better.
I again recommend Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2005 piece in Nature.
I know, I know, it just isn’t going to happen. KSR isn’t even going to write the novel, beyond that sketch, nor will we live in that world.
But, hey, early days of, perhaps, a smarter world? Someone should start that thing.
There is a problem in communication between engineers and scientists.
Consider date of ice loss. Scientists pick dates where they have some certainty that it will already have happened. Engineers pick the last date that they have some certainty that it will not have happened. A compromise would be to pick a date where half of the ice volume of 1900 had been lost, or when half of the functionality of the ice had been lost.
Fifty years of gradual ice decline with maker events in 2007 and 2012, along with changes in the consistency and quality of the tell us that the ice is going. We are somewhere between the scientist’s and the engineers date of ice loss.
When do we say the ice is “gone”? Ten years ago, I would have said, “as determined by satellite extent or area”. Today, I would say, “when it stops condensing water vapor out of the lower Arctic atmosphere.”
Sorry guys, but the sea ice has warmed and cracked enough that there is now significant amounts amounts of latent heat in the lower atmosphere across the Arctic. For its role of condensing latent heat out of the lower atmosphere and radiating that heat into space, the Arctic Sea ice is functionally degraded.
My point is that the sea ice has degraded to the extent that the change in the character of the ice significantly affects the weather in the temperate northern hemisphere. Functionally the ice is highly degraded.
Now, when your car has had a wreck and does not go (is functionally highly degraded), you can still see the hulk, but is it a car or a pile of scrap metal? When your house has been hit by a tornado and roof torn off (functionally highly degraded) is it still a house or is it a pile of scrap wood?
Yes, there is ice floating in the Arctic Ocean, but is it performing the roles that we traditionally expect from the intact Arctic Sea Ice? If it is not doing what we expect sea ice to do, then we have already lost it.
This is not “moving the goal posts.” Goal posts are part of a game. This is situation awareness in a rapidly changing environment.
http://www.washington.edu/news/2015/07/17/marine-plankton-brighten-clouds-over-southern-ocean/
hat tip to: http://www.livescience.com/51598-marine-aerosols-clouds-climate-change.html
I 100% buy into arguments that loss of Arctic sea ice is already driving changes in the behavior of weather systems, creating blocking patterns in the jet stream leading to extreme heat waves and drought. (Also causing record cold and snowfall. I live in the northeast US.) I absolutely believe this will only get worse.
As for the ice itself, I think it is reasonably likely that we will have an September average extent of less than 1 million sq km before 2030. If I have to pull a number out of thin air, say 40% chance of at least one year at less than 1 million sq km. Furthermore, at this point reaching 1 million sq km eventually is unstoppable, but we should be doing everything we can to limit the rate at which it occurs, and to stop or slow the melt of the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets.
I think that less than 1 million sq km before 2020 is very unlikely, but not impossible.
1 million sq km this year? Impossible. Furthermore, people like Wadhams making predictions that it will happen this year is harmful, because it’s not believable and it looks like he’s crying wolf.
The ice may be rotten, but his claim is that it is rotten in a way that will cause it to behave in a way that has never been observed before. Wadhams doesn’t have any sort of physical models which can back that prediction up. The question you should ask is if the ice is that rotten, why hasn’t the observed extent loss so far this year reflected that?
If you want to claim that ice will melt for the rest of this year at the same rate as it did in 2012, I don’t think it’s likely, but it’s certainly believable. Melt fast enough to catch up with 2012 and set a new record? Very unlikely. I’ll believe it when I see it. Melt fast enough to get to 1 million sq km? Impossible. Far too far from what we’ve seen before to take seriously.
I’ve arrived here somewhat late in the day via a link from the Arctic Sea Ice Forum. In all the circumstances perhaps I might repeat here what I recently said over there.
In a personal communication Prof. Wadhams informs me that:
“My SIPN prediction is an outlier but it is in fact what is predicted by the 5-year trend in ice volume in September. In 2013 and 2014 the volume in summer came in above this trend, but since then we have started a new El Nino which tends to increase air temperatures more. I am just staking this area out as a marker, and expect to be shot down in flames”.
[Response: Of course he will be. This is posturing, not science. – gavin]
“Seas will continue to warm for centuries even if manmade greenhouse gas emissions were frozen at today’s levels, say US government scientists…”
– See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/07/unforced-variations-july-2015/comment-page-3/#comment-633837
Well, duh! Freezing emissions at today’s levels would clearly still mean increasing concentrations… Has anyone ever said anything different?
Ed asks: “Has the temperature of the ice itself been measured?”
– See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/07/unforced-variations-july-2015/comment-page-3/#comment-633866
Yes, indeed it has. Here’s the paper describing the ice surface temp data product (IST):
http://modis-snow-ice.gsfc.nasa.gov/uploads/pap_sea_ice_ist.pdf
There’s a near-real-time map available here:
http://polarportal.dk/en/havisen-i-arktis/nbsp/sea-ice-temperature/
Not sure if that’s the identical product, but it doesn’t matter much for present purposes.
(Apologies if a variant of this already got posted; I can’t see it, or any indication that it’s in moderation.)
Fix my amateur estimate please.
* Today we have 120 extra ppm of CO2
* …which has yielded today’s global temp rise (ignoring future warming that’s locked in.)
* The new Dutton et al. Science paper estimate has today’s temp alone corresponding, roughly, to a sea level that’s 6m (19.6 feet, = 236 inches) higher than today’s. (sciencemag.org/content/349/6244/aaa4019.abstract)
* 236/120ppm = 2 inches expected SL rise per added ppm CO2, underestimated.
* Current CO2 rise is 2.11ppm/year (2005-2014, co2now.org/Current-CO2/CO2-Trend/acceleration-of-atmospheric-co2.html )
* So each year we’re adding 4 inches (2.11*2) to the ultimate sea level rise, which again doesn’t count rise from the in-the-pipeline future warming from atm. CO2 already present. Can this be factored in?
OSweetMrMath wrote “And the numbers say this prediction is not credible.”
But where do the numbers come from? Have you not heard the expression “Past performance is no guarantee of future results”?
Have a look here: http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.uk/ and you will see there is a large area in the Beaufort Sea about to disappear which will easily produce a loss of over 150,000 sq km per day.
Generic Reader,
Earth System Science is not linear, and you cannot work out sea level rise from CO2 rise. It is a chaotic relationship. For instance,when the Arctic sea ice melts, which it will do at 400 ppm CO2, then the warm Arctic will melt the Greenland ice sheet even faster adding ~7m to sea level even if CO2 stays at 400 ppm.
I am very disappointed in most of the models for underestimating the impact of June snow cover on Arctic sea ice on the final September extent. In most of the models, years like 2012 seem to be caused more often by other factors, while those seem to grotesquely mis-predict the shape of the ice pack.
If you actually look at June snow cover, it has a surprising ability to relate to not only the September extent but also to the shape of the ice pack. For this reason, I submitted my prediction of 3.26 M km^2 to the SIPN netowrk, which is based on a linear regression of September extent against snow cover on Arctic sea ice on June 13th of each year.
Other apparent correlations, such as with April or May modelled ice volume, I would argue, are less compelling, because they fail to predict the shape of the ice pack.
I have a now-longstanding argument with Chris Reynolds about the impact of snow retreat on ice retreat. He remains convinced that a 2m-thick ice pack in spring will not melt dramatically in summer no matter how aggressive the June snow melt over the Arctic sea ice is in a given year.
Yet he is basing this on PIOMAS, which has no melt ponds and never drops the albedo of concentrated pack ice below 65%. For these reasons I find Chris’s “slow transition” argument incredibly uncompelling.
For the ‘We Are Here’ department:
Cross-posted from Skeptical Science: what China is promising, and what they want in Paris in December:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-pledge-china-on-course-peak-emissions-2027.html
If I want to get a dataset of mean temperature for each month for each year for a single specified weather station over a specified 30+ year period (like this: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/NH.Ts+dSST.txt ), where do I find the data?
At ncdc.noaa.gov I can request a single year of data for the weather station, but since it’s a climate data center, there must be a way to get data for a multiyear period.
p.s. I’m not a robot, but please don’t make me crave steak. Pictures of anything else are fine.
#256 Kevin McKinney said “Seas will continue to warm for centuries even if manmade greenhouse gas emissions were frozen at today’s levels, say US government scientists…”
Well, duh! Freezing emissions at today’s levels would clearly still mean increasing concentrations… Has anyone ever said anything different?
Huh. I had interpreted that to mean concentrations were frozen at today’s levels, but you may be right. The context was they also ran a simulation with atmospheric C back at pre-industrial levels (something I had sought for years), resulting in cooling, and stabilization of the ice sheets (something I had hypothesized for years) in surprisingly short time frames, so I took the “freeze” to be ppm. If you’re right, then it truly is a “Doh!” moment, and a pointless study, really. Well, except for that return to pre-industrial part, which is AWESOME!
I don’t think anyone but myself realizes the implications of this study. It’s the most important climate study ever, imo.
#158 Generic Reader said * So each year we’re adding 4 inches (2.11*2) to the ultimate sea level rise, which again doesn’t count rise from the in-the-pipeline future warming from atm. CO2 already present. Can this be factored in?
I’m not a math guy, but I would point out the effect is almost certainly a rising parabolic curve, i.e. exponential. Your average will be ever rising. At least, until you reach diminishing returns with ice mass and melt falls due to falling volumes of ice left to melt.
Hubbert’s curves for oil might be a rough analogue, particularly the more shark finned examples.
” Well, except for that return to pre-industrial part, which is AWESOME!”
See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/07/unforced-variations-july-2015/comment-page-4/#comment-633884
Amen, brother!
You’ve whetted my appetite to look at the actual study…
The Arctic “debate” in here is certainly lively!
Re: Alastair McDonald says: 19 Jul 2015 at 6:42 PM
Have a look at:
What’s wrong with HYCOM?
and then:
https://youtu.be/cdaJuDLB_BA
You can certainly see that some hefty chunks of most likely multi-year ice have already melted out of the Beaufort Sea, but I have to say that it’s a bit of a stretch to then claim that the “Beaufort Sea will easily produce a loss of over 150,000 sq km per day”!
What will you do if the reality ultimately “shoots you down in flames”?
Re Gavin says: 19 Jul 2015 at 4:12 PM
What do you make of Prof. Wadhams work on “waves-in-ice”? I ask because I’ve just reported on the most recent such event (that I am aware of):
R/V Lance Encounters Another Energetic Wave Event in the Arctic
Apples and oranges
#145 Adam Ash,
Methane is a significant issue. However I agree with Dr Archer when he states it is more likely to be chronic rather than catastrophic. The main issue being it will exacerbate what is already going on with human emissions.
Prof Wadhams prediction has caused so much puzzlement that even the SIPN organisers felt it necessary to address it in their June Summary. See the final paragraph of Current Conditions, here:
http://www.arcus.org/sipn/sea-ice-outlook/2015/june
I note that you commented over at Nevens blog in the very same thread where Larry Hamilton expressed puzzlement. Then I suggested it might be a benchmarking exercise. Then I had to retract that after seeing the video of Prof Wadhams saying that disapearance of the ice by September ‘could easily happen this year or in the next couple of years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8xdOTyGQOso
Latest thing is that it seems it was a benchmarking exercise, as Jim Hunt has repeated here, but oriiginally posted here:
http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1149.msg57191.html#msg57191
Note that Prof Wadham’s was the first summary of the other SIPN participants for June that I read, it didn’t answer my questions.
Not being persuaded that the statistical extrapolation method tells us anything about sea ice, I haven’t really followed it much. But I think the original prediction was something like 2015 +/-3 years. I am as sceptical about 1 million kmsq minimum by 2018 as I am about it this year, excluding some form of extreme event causing loss of ice e.g. a meteor strike on the Arctic Ocean in May.
#147 Chuck Hughes,
Yet there is nothing about this year that we haven’t seen before. Even the recent above average loss of sea ice is arguably due to the emergence of the Arctic Dipole. The idea of a crash to around 1 million kmsq within a few years demands that we see indices that are strongly outside of the envelope of past behaviour. Needless to say one does have to concentrate on the post 2007 period as a benchmark for such behaviour, yet even with that allowance, the pack is _not_ behaving abnormaly. Everything points to a September minimum within the range of 2007 to 2014 minimae, and the continued picture of decades of preconditioning through volume loss (which has come from loss of older thicker ice) plus weather, the same story of every year from 2007 to 2014.
Nightvid Cole,
Do you know what Sea Lioning is? http://wondermark.com/1k62/
1) I cannot say anything more than I have already said. Your claimed link relies on three years of data, you’ll need more years to make the link stronger.
2) This discussion is not about the ‘slow transition’ idea which is based solely upon the maintenance of winter volume.
3) In this document (page 27):
http://web.whoi.edu/famos/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2014/06/FELTHAM_FAMOS_talk_ponds_2014.pdf
Feltham notes that:
“Even with no change in radiative forcing, atmospheric or oceanic conditions, the change in sea ice topography alone will result in greater sea ice melt.”
This is indeed found in PIOMAS, as evidenced by the 2007 and 2010 volume loss events.
However as that document shows, and as the 2012 melt season showed, melt pond distribution is already approaching a limit (page 28). One cannot go over ‘1’ in a normalised melt pond fraction.
3) PIOMAS includes an albedo dependence upon snow cover, as is shown in Flato & Hibler 1995, eqn A3.
http://www.ccpo.odu.edu/~klinck/Reprints/PDF/flatoJGR95.pdf
This is referenced in Zhang & Rothrock 2001 “A Thickness and Enthalpy Distribution Sea-Ice Model”.
Note that the assumption used is that albedo’s dependence on snow cover is linearly related to ice thickness (up to a limit above which 100% snow cover is assumed). Furthemore PIOMAS uses an albedo of 0.75 for ice, which drops to 0.65 for wet ice (Flato & Hibler table 2). This would go some way towards explaining the behaviour noted in point 3 above, and to explaining why PIOMAS does so well despite not including melt ponds.
While not producing albedo as low as melt ponds (Perovich & Polashenski, 2012, “Albedo evolution of seasonal Arctic sea ice.”)
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8452/8030738470_b90a73494c.jpg
PIOMAS does include albedo changes with the season and with ice thickness.
#165 It is more complex than that. The decay of the Greenland and Antarctic ice removes overburden that will be compensated for by isostatic uplift, and as the volume of rock doesn’t change this will lead to subsidence in the areas surrounding the decaying ice. I would expect the continental shelves surrounding these ice caps to subside by about 40% of the volume of ice lost so the sea level rise will be reduced by at least part of that amount, by a falling parabolic curve.
After 40+ years of looking at data, why wasn’t Richard Lindzen able to figure out the connection between the QBO and ENSO?
http://contextearth.com/2015/07/11/enso-transformation/
#165 Killian,
As a math guy, I should point out that this is incorrect: “a rising parabolic curve, i.e. exponential”.
Parabolic curves are graphs for quadratic formulas such y = x ^ 2.
In contrast, an exponential function would have a form such as y = 2 ^ x.
This seemingly minor change is actually quite huge.
Any exponential function (including, say y = 1.00000001 ^ x) will eventually and permanently outgrow any polynomial function (including, say y = x ^ 999999999) for values of x beyond some threshold.
Polynomial growth can be fast, but exponential growth (even if it seems to start slowly) dramatically shoots off the charts.
[end pedantry]
Note: my comment was entirely on that one phrase — I’m not making any claims about the phenomenon you guys were discussing.
K: I don’t think anyone but myself realizes the implications of this study.
BPL: You’re a legend in your own mind.
A question to anyone expert in this area: is the following a good way to conceptualize the positive feedback caused by H2O? It makes sense to me, but I’ve had trouble finding any online explanations quite like it.
—
We can define several “tops of the atmosphere” where longwave photons escape from an inner realm to an outer one — one outermost top for all the non-condensing gases such as CO2 or CH4, where the photons make a final escape to space, and an inner top for each codensing gas such as H2O where longwave photons make their final escape from that gas to an outer region. (In practice, H2O is probably the only consensing gas that matters.)
Increasing CO2 traps more energy below the outer top for non-condensing gases, and the consqeuent increased atmopsheric H2O then traps yet more energy below the inner top for H2O, amplifying the original warming with a postive feedback.
The net warming would then depend (among other things) on the fraction of photons that escape directly to space from an H2O vs. CO2 molecule. The closer that is to zero, the simpler the model is.
So two additional questions:
Is that fraction known?
Would a higher fraction lower climate sensistivity? (Reasonaing that if the final escape was sometimes from an H2O molecule, adding more CO2 would be adding proportionately less to the total pool of molecules regulating the final escape.)
—
Pardon my ignorance if this all explained cleary somewhere. Then a pointer would suffice…
#156,164–The Guardian story linked has a different quote: ““Even if we were to freeze greenhouse gases at current levels, the sea would actually continue to warm for centuries and millennia, and as they continue to warm and expand the sea levels will continue to rise…””
Probably a headline-writing editor was responsible for confusing emissions and concentrations.
Jim (Hunt)
You wrote “I have to say that it’s a bit of a stretch to then claim that the “Beaufort Sea will easily produce a loss of over 150,000 sq km per day”!”
The Navy may have got it wrong but the ice in the Beaufort Sea is about to disappear:
ftp://ftp-projects.zmaw.de/seaice/AMSR2Arc_latest_yesterday_AMSR2_3.125km.png
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr2/arctic_AMSR2_nic.png
Moreover one of the webcams set up at the North Pole is fallin over in the melting ice:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/NPEO2015/2015cam1_1.jpg
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/NPEO2015/2015cam2_1.jpg
Then you asked “What will you do if the reality ultimately “shoots you down in flames”?” In that case I will breathe a sigh of relief, but what will you do if Nature proves Prof. Wadhams and me correct?
I’ll say again “Earth Science is not linear.” The realisty of sea ice is that one year you get a small change in extent, the next you get a new record follwed by a partial recovery. But if too much ice melts then it won’t recover. That is what we face. One season fairly soon the ice will melt and stay melted.
The se ice is controlled by the ice albedo effect, whichis a positive feedback. It there is no sea ice there then the feedback cannot operate and the Arctic Ocean will remain ice free.
157 Kevin McKinney http://polarportal.dk/en/havisen-i-arktis/nbsp/sea-ice-temperature/
Some open water and the ice temperature is no more than 10 below Centigrade at this time. A lot of the ice is slushy wet or close to it. The ice is not the barrier to navigation that it used to be. An ice breaker would be overkill. While avoiding the big icebergs, I think many ships could go mostly wherever they want to in the Arctic ocean today.
The Arctic ocean is on the edge of being ice free. It is going to be a matter of definition. Is it ice free when 10% of all commercial ships can make it to all Arctic ocean ports without an ice breaker? I doubt that we would require the very last ice cube to be gone before calling it “ice free.”
#168 Hank Roberts said … a rising parabolic curve, i.e. exponential….
Apples and oranges
Thanks, peanut! Guess I shoulda paid more attention in math… alas…
I see that Prof Rahmstorf is an author of a paper with Hansen on large sea level rise. Perhaps he could comment on it?
Any thoughts on Hansen’s latest nontraditional paper on accelerated sea level rise?
Hansen
Guy McPherson
Another interview with Doug Peacock ended with a 20 year end of civilization and all the ice sheets melting. He said scientists are afraid to tell us the truth. I think not on both counts. He’s a friend of this guy.
Arrrrrgh. One picture so far, and that taken July 6th and only made available yesterday sometime.
The promise: “a new photo of our planet every two hours…. Photos are made available to the public at this site with a 24h delay.
We collect these images, put them into the Internet Archive and continously combine them into weekly and monthly timelapse videos. “
Because it’s public material, right? So people were planning to work with it as quickly as possible. All the multispectral imagery, I’d hope, not just the three color frames to combine as a visible color image.
The delivery: “The NASA satellite will snap a selfie of Earth every day, the space agency says, and it will post them to a dedicated page by September.”
Because the Air Force owns it now? What’s the original resolution being captured for each wavelength? And what do we get to see and when?
What Gavin needs is a cool place to retire to for a little summer vacation.
What would be sensible criteria for classifying someone as a climate policy expert, and why is there no equivalent of Real Climate (and its comments section) for policy?
The Arctic is certainly coming in for a great deal of attention. Everyone seems to be waiting with bated breath for the day the Arctic Ocean runs out of ice. But one should not forget the Antarctic; the situation there is equally dire, if not quite as visible. In this regard I have an anecdote that might be of interest.
I was a member of the eleventh South African expedition to Antarctica in 1970. Our minimum temperature for the year was -50 degrees Celsius in August. Our average temperatures for the winter months were -26 in June, -31 in July and -32 in August. According to our meteorologists these temperatures were typical of that era.
Our base was near the edge of the ice shelf. The current South African base is on an escarpment in the mountains further south. One would therefore expect their temperatures to be lower than ours. One would be wrong.
A former team-mate in regular contact with the current base mentioned in an e-mail last year that the minimum temperature for 2014 was -35 degrees. Not only that, but in recent years the annual minimum has been typically in the range from -28 to -35. This is not too different from our average winter temperatures. I was shocked. This little corner of Queen Maud Land appears to have experienced 15 degrees or more of warming. One wonders about the rest of the continent.
Hello RealClimate team, new research published by a former peer at nasa states a new dire look on sea level rise.
It also disagrees with your 2 degree limit goals.
Are one of your peers at real climate going to respond to this claim or are you inclined to agree?
http://www.sciencealert.com/alarming-new-report-warns-coastal-cities-may-be-uninhabitable-within-50-years
Since Hank mentioned Kim Stanley Robinson recently, I thought I’d share a bit of an article in Monday’s Sacramento Bee about his newest novel. Stan, an award-winning science fiction writer, wrote a three-part trilogy on climate change as well as a similar three-book series on colonizing Mars.
“Robinson’s new novel is “Aurora,” about a colonization mission to a fictitious Earth-size moon orbiting the actual Planet E, which orbits the real star Tau Ceti, 11.88 light years from Earth (Orbit, $26, 480 pages). To make sure his scenario was scientifically solid, he consulted experts at NASA’s Ames Research Center.
“Q: But what if we could get to another planet for colonization?
“A: This is a mistake because there’s no place other than Earth where humanity can be healthy and safe. When we land on another planet, we’ll find out if it’s either alive or dead. It it’s alive, we’ll be in trouble because the life that’s there already will either make us sick or kill us. If it’s dead, we’ll have to terraform it, in which case we’ll die before it’s ready.”
Stan (who I am fortunate to have as a neighbor and a friend) understands the difference between science and science fiction.
http://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/books/article27542743.html
I am not surprised that sea ice has dominated the discussions recently. As always, I’ll agree with Gavin about Wadhams (I don’t think I have ever read Dr Schmidt commit anything erroneous but typos!), but until I get answers from Peter about how he got to formulate his projections, Dr Wadhams does not his science work a favour.
Is also good to read about Aaron Lewis work, which sadly I still have not seen any models output, like the one from England, which actually placed sea ice results on animation sequence maps and placed 2007 minima in 2038! I admired the Met office braveness and very scientific approach for at least publishing their results, it was a start. There are many people who can help out the problem they have with sea ice projections (I sound like a scratched cd repeating this lament for years), and like Wadhams, I don’t think that not publishing results from runs is a good way to correct potential errors.
Not only about sea ice of course, but also high resolution lower upper temperature profile forecasts as well, in particular the first 50 meters with emphasis on the first 3 meters above surface. I have come up with a flawless refraction method which may verify any temperature profile forecast instantly, but these potent observations can’t be useful for the models if we never can compare with what they calculate.
I see that 51 ‘personalities’ have convened as The Paris Summit of Conscience.
Does this mean another petition is in the works ? </a.
sidd, mark and zach: gavin has responded to the recent Hansen et alia study here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150721-james-hansen-sea-level-rise-climate-change-global-warming-science/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_tw20150722news-sealevel&utm_campaign=Content&sf11210763=1
>>>
Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says the Hansen report is merely “one scenario, and not evidence for that scenario.”
Schmidt says the study “might add to the discussions” but is far enough from conventional thinking that it is unlikely to change mainstream climate views, international negotiations on reducing carbon, or the IPCC’s recommendations to world governments. <<
Re Alastair McDonald says: 20 Jul 2015 at 10:22 AM
I have an entire web site site devoted to this stuff. I even report personal communications from Prof. Wadhams on there. See e.g:
Is Time Running Out for Arctic Sea Ice?
If you hunt around in the resources section you will no doubt discover lots of “icecam” images, and also the fact that the ones you mention are now quite some way from the North Pole. Temperature profiles of the ice floe under those cams are available too. The regional graphs will also allow you to determine the current rate of decline of Beaufort Sea ice extent.
Please feel free to give that a try and let us know what answer you come up with.
#187, Zachary–
RC contributors can speak for themselves, but this long-time reader must note that RC has long pointed out how conservative the IPCC has been on sea-level rise.
Also the fact that Eric Rignot, one of the so-authors on Hansen et al., is in fact an RC contributor.
I don’t think RC has ever staked out some kind of ‘official position’ on the 2C limit, though there was that post about the inadvisability of certain alternate metrics that had been proposed.
Re #175
James, there is a good description of how the positive feedback caused by H2O is conceptualised in the current paradigm here: Twomey, S. 1991. ‘Aerosols, Clouds and Radiation.’ Atmospheric Environment. Part A. General Topics 25 (11): 2435–42.‘[PDF] from Ubairpollution.org.’ 2015. Accessed July 9. http://ubairpollution.org/Papers/General_and_Review/twomey1990.pdf.
HTH, Alastair.
Jim,
I have visited your web site “The Great White Con” and skimmed the blog article there. Are you now having second thoughts about the Arctic sea ice melting being a con?
I have been looking at the numbers for Arctic sea ice retreat and over the last few days it has averaged at around -120,000 sq km and is closing in on the 2012 figures. See http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/ This map is probaly the most dramatic with regard to the Beaufort ice, and if it melts soon then it seems likely to me that the the 2015 melt will overtake that of 2012. Of course that does not mean we will have a new record since the August weather will be the decider. 2013 and 2014 were close to 2012 until then.
As you wrote, the North Pole cameras have moved, but they are heading for the Fram Strait exit. It looks as if the whole ice pack is moving with them out of the ocean http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/DriftTrackMap.html which may acount for the lack of ice in the Beaufort Sea.
The “definition” of an ice free Arctic is less than 1 M sq km, which explains Wadhams 0.95 M sq km. He is predicting an ice free Arctic this year. Even if he is wrong this year, if he keeps predicting it he will be correct pretty soon. The point to take is that it is better to panic now than after he has been proved correct.
Don’t listen to the other pundits, they are in denial and think that they can predict a non-linear system using statistical trends.
193: I’m not saying your wrong but I don’t see that name in the listed contributors. (see below)
I’m also sorry if my initial question came off rude. That was not my intent.
Contributors
Filed under: Contributor Bio’s — group @ 6 December 2004
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SUMOME
The current permanent contributors to content on this site are:
Gavin Schmidt
Michael Mann
Rasmus Benestad
Ray Bradley
Stefan Rahmstorf
Eric Steig
David Archer
Ray Pierrehumbert
William Connolley was a contributor, but has now left academia; Jim Bouldin was a contributor from 2009 and Caspar Ammann and Thibault de Garidel were early supporters of the site.
– See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/contributors/#sthash.ZT2PHAOA.dpuf
What happens when there is no more ice left in the Arctic for an extended period of time? That’s what I want to know. How much different will things be when that happens as opposed to right now? It seems we’re arguing over some ice cubes. What’s the upshot of no ice in the Arctic? Maybe it’s a few weeks or a month of no ice? What difference will it make as far as weather patterns globally? Any thoughts on that? Thanks.
Re #193, Science is science and 2C is a political position due to the fact that its going to take a long time to get down to 1 ppmv per annum of CO2 from the current 2 ppmv per annum let alone down to zero. As science does more research and discovers that the real differs slightly from the idealised but useful computer model and possibly realises that things are as likely to be worse rather than better than forecast does not really change the political and economic stance on 7 billion humans being desiring growth, prosperity and a better quality of life for themselves and their children. By better quality of life I would imagine it means to live like those in the USA with their incredible 250 KWH per day of energy usage (125 KWh day for the average European) which is not a great position.
The future is bleaker than the present is.
@185 Generic Reader:
> why is there no equivalent of Real Climate for policy?
Because climate scientists have been under attack from blatant bad actors for the science itself–let alone for policy ideas. If less money-is-speech hostility were being thrown at climate science and scientists, they would be freer to contribute more speech-is-speech input on policy analysis, I think.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a36228/ballad-of-the-sad-climatologists-0815/
Because if you’re outside the U.S. you may look back and marvel at the anti-science atmosphere in the the U.S.
But it’s a great question. And your other one is too:
> criteria for classifying someone as a climate policy expert…
http://www.sciencealert.com/alarming-new-report-warns-coastal-cities-may-be-uninhabitable-within-50-years
Comment by Zachary — 22 Jul 2015
I’m not a scientist, as I always like to point out but…. I’ve always thought that the ice will melt much faster than anyone has predicted. It doesn’t make sense to me that it would take centuries to see several feet of SLR given how fast we’ve managed to heat things up. I look for many unpleasant surprises in the next few decades and not just with SLR.
I had requested a “worst case scenario” projection in the past. I think it would be very helpful to know ‘what’s the worst that could happen’ in say 30 years? Not because I’m a gloom and doom fan but because IT COULD HAPPEN, right? We need a ‘just in case’ plan of action as opposed to all the rosy optimism of the IPCC reports based on 100 year time scales.
Would it be possible to have an article or two based on a worst case situation, rather than continuing to pretend it won’t happen? Thanks