Antarctic sea ice extents meaningless due to yearly variation - deniers duped again

The real point of this post is summed up by the last image in this post.

Conflating the shrinking Arctic sea ice, which is in a death spiral, with the maximum extent of the much less significant Antarctic sea ice, which shrinks to almost nothing at its minimum every year, is just the usual fossil fuel industry/denier cult deceptive propaganda gimmick.

Arctic sea ice has been rapidly disappearing, shrinking in both extent and volume for decades. In the 1950's, Arctic sea ice extent was around 4.25 million square miles and the large majority of it was thick multi-year ice, but by 2012, the extent had declined to only 1.32 million square miles of mostly thin first-year ice. There is a strong downward trend in ice extent that amounts to about 13.7% per decade.


Monthly September ice extent for 1979 to 2013 shows a decline of 13.7% per decade. - Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center

In that same period, the floating sea ice got radically thinner, thus also reducing the total ice volume, which just measuring ice extent in square miles doesn't capture.


Arctic sea ice volume anomaly from PIOMAS updated once a month. Daily Sea Ice volume anomalies for each day are computed relative to the 1979 to 2011 average for that day of the year. Tickmarks on time axis refer to 1st day of year. The trend for the period 1979- present is shown in blue. Shaded areas show one and two standard deviations from the trend. Error bars indicate the uncertainty of the monthly anomaly plotted once per year.
(source: University of Washington Polar Science Center PIOMAS)

The Arctic ice loss has been especially fast over the last decade or so, where it has declined in extent from 2.31 million square miles in 2002 (at minimum extent in September) to only 1.32 million square miles in 2012 (Sept. minimum). This ice loss radically changes the Earth's albedo as highly reflective sea ice vanishes and is replaced by the strongly light-absorbing dark sea water. This is a global warming positive feedback loop where warming causes sea ice loss which increases ocean warming, causing further ice loss, resulting in more warming and then more ice loss, and so on and so on. Most climate scientists think that the Arctic sea ice is in a downward death spiral. The disappearance of this ice is already affecting weather patterns all over the northern latitudes. This Arctic ice loss is ongoing, almost continuous, and very radical.

In contrast, almost all of the ice around the southern pole is resting on the continent of Antarctica. Ice sheets two miles thick and enormous glaciers are now melting and losing ice mass and raising sea levels. The complete loss of some major glaciers in West Antarctica is now considered inevitable. Surrounding the continent of Antarctica is a fringe of seasonal sea ice that melts away almost completely every summer and reforms in the winter. The extent of the winter reformation of the sea ice at its maximum has increased slightly over the last decade, about one tenth of the surface area of ice (extent, not volume, that loss is even greater) the Arctic has permanently lost. For this reason, the global sea ice extents, which deniers love to cite, are an almost meaningless metric for understanding what is happening to the Earth's ice. Which is exactly why the deceitful denier cultists try to cite them so often in their foolish attempt to confuse people with the meaningless numbers you get when you add up the Southern Hemisphere winter maximum ice extents to Arctic ice extents and ignore the enormously smaller SH summer minimum extents.


These images using satellite-derived sea ice concentration data show average minimum and maximum sea ice during March and September for the Arctic and Antarctic from 1979 to 2000. Seasons are opposite between the Southern and Northern Hemispheres; the South reaches its summer minimum in February, while the North reaches its summer minimum in September. (March is shown for both hemispheres for consistency.)

Almost all of the sea ice that forms during the Antarctic winter melts during the summer. During the winter, up to 18 million square kilometers (6.9 million square miles) of ocean is covered by sea ice, but by the end of summer, only about 3 million square kilometers (1.1 million square miles) of sea ice remain.
(source: National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado.)[/SIZE]

 

It is not surprising that the duped and deluded deniers of AGW/CC are unwilling or unable to respond to the clear facts about Antarctic sea ice and its yearly variations that debunk their myths and fantasies about the minor, insignificant and very temporary increase in the maximum mid-winter extent of that Southern Hemisphere sea ice. Facing the failure of their anti-science cultic myths must make their heads hurt so they ignore the obvious implications of the picture of the yearly Antarctic sea ice maximum/minimum and the info from the NSDIC that was in the OP.


Almost all of the sea ice that forms during the Antarctic winter melts during the summer. During the winter, up to 18 million square kilometers (6.9 million square miles) of ocean is covered by sea ice, but by the end of summer, only about 3 million square kilometers (1.1 million square miles) of sea ice remain.
(source: National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado.)

 

No what the skeptics state is so what if the ice is supposedly melting. so what? What is it you're afraid of? the boogeyman? First off, you have no idea of any of what you post. there was more ice in the arctic this previous winter than the one before it. Ice has always melted in the arctic. It sea ice has no impact on anything. So what is your point?

 

I understand that on this topic you are completely clueless and very ignorant, jc, but your own rank ignorance is not actually a valid argument. The melting of the Arctic ice cap is already causing serious changes in climate and weather patterns, as many scientific studies affirm. Concern over this has nothing to do with your ridiculous "boogeyman" fantasies.

The ice is melting - and you cluelessly say "so what".....

So the ice and snow which have continuously covered the Arctic Ocean for at least the last 6000 years or so and which reflect 90% of the sunlight back into space without converting it to long wave infrared that could be trapped by greenhouse gases, melt back and are replaced by dark ocean waters, which absorb 90% of the sun's energy, thus further warming the ocean waters and the air above them, thus causing more ice to melt, exposing more ocean surface, and causing more warming, and so on and so on. It's called Arctic Amplification, a positive feedback loop that is quickly moving the Arctic into a state of ice free summers. This means the summer cooling effect of the Arctic ice cap on northern hemisphere climate patterns will be lost. The resulting accelerating warming will further increase the latitudinal shift of the jet-stream, thus drying out areas of land further to the north resulting in changes to vegetation and land albedo as well as increased fire risk (all of which translate to increased CO2 and increased warming). Dryer regions moving north will severely impact existing crop growth infrastructure.

Arctic melt causes more climate problems than anticipated
The amount of heat absorbed by the dark ocean exposed by the melting Arctic ice-cap could be as much as one quarter of all the heat trapped by man-made carbon dioxide.
GRAHAM READFEARN
ABC Environment
20 FEB 2014
(excerpts)
FOR 50 YEARS or so, scientists have warned that if Arctic ice melts then the planet will be less able to reflect the sun's energy and further fuel global warming. Now, a new study using more than 30 years of satellite measurements has confirmed this hypothesis, warning that melting Arctic ice is having a greater impact on the world's energy balance than previously thought. The study, published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is thought to be the first to accurately calculate how much extra energy the Earth has absorbed as Arctic ice melts. Since the 1970s, the study says the Arctic has warmed by 2°C — more than double the global average — while the amount of ice left at the end of the melt season each September has dropped by 40 per cent.

Assistant Professor Ian Eisenman, one of three scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, who carried out the research said, "Our study showed the Arctic has darkened quite a bit during the past 35 years, and hence it's absorbing a lot more solar radiation than it used to. If you take this extra energy that's being absorbed in the Arctic and spread it out over the entire globe, we found that it's 25 per cent as large as the heating that's been caused by the direct effects of increasing CO2 during the same period. This implies that Arctic sea ice retreat has been an important player in the global warming that we've observed during recent decades." In the same way that white objects stay cooler than dark ones in the sun, the bright surface of Arctic ice has a high 'albedo' that helps keep the world cooler. But less ice means more areas of darker ocean exposed to the sun, which Eisenman said, then warmed the ocean. The extra energy being absorbed was roughly double what some climate change computer models had predicted. Professor Carlos Duarte, director of the Oceans Institute at The University of Western Australia, said: "This study points again at the Arctic as a central, not marginal, region for the regulation of the climatic balance of Earth, where a tipping point is likely trespassed, with planetary-scale consequences."

Wrong again. I am far, far more informed and aware of what is going on and of the scientific research that is the foundation of our current understanding of these changes than you obviously are. All you've got are crackpot rightwing conspiracy theories, pseudo-science and misinformation.

LOLOL. "SO WHAT"???

2012 was a record low ice extent. None of the scientists expected two record low extents back to back. As the OP made clear, Arctic ice extents and volume have been in serious decline for many decades now. In the 1950s, Arctic ice extent was estimated to be about 4.25 million square miles but the extent had shrunk to only 1.32 million square miles in 2012. The thickness and overall volume of the ice has also declined sharply. As the scientists expected, there was a rebound towards the mean in 2013 but the trend is still sharply downward and there will certainly be another new record low extent either this year or within a few years.

Meaningless drivel. The current melt off of the Arctic ice is unique in human history and is the result of the global warming created by mankind's carbon emissions.

Has the Arctic Ocean always had ice in summer?
National Snow and Ice Data Center
We know for sure that at least in the distant past, the Arctic was ice-free. Fossils from the age of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, indicate a temperate climate with ferns and other lush vegetation. Based on the paleoclimate record from ice and ocean cores, the last warm period in the Arctic peaked about 8,000 years ago, during the so-called Holocene Thermal Maximum. Some studies suggest that as recent as 5,500 years ago, the Arctic had less summertime sea ice than today. However, it is not clear that the Arctic was completely free of summertime sea ice during this time.

The next earliest era when the Arctic was quite possibly free of summertime ice was 125,000 years ago, during the height of the last major interglacial period, known as the Eemian. Temperatures in the Arctic were higher than now and sea level was also 4 to 6 meters (13 to 20 feet) higher than it is today because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets had partly melted. Because of the burning of fossil fuels, global averaged temperatures today are getting close to the maximum warmth seen during the Eemian. Carbon dioxide levels now are far above the highest levels during the Eemian, indicating there is still warming to come. According to analyses at NASA and NOAA, the past decade has been the warmest in the observational record dating back to the 19th century and the Arctic has been substantially higher than the global average.

Once again you reveal the depths of your own ignorance. The loss of the majority of the Arctic sea ice is already having an enormous impact and these effects are only going to get more extreme as the ice continues to melt away.

My point, and the point that all the world's scientists are trying to make, is very obviously completely beyond your comprehension.

 

You have no proof at all that melting ice causes climate change. Sorry dude. And, the ice isn't melted yet, like I pointed out the past winter the arctic had more ice than the previous year. Ice will always melt in the summer months, ALWAYS. Perhaps you should learn about the big yellow sphere in the sky that heats the planet. Let me ask another question, why did the ship in the antarctic get stuck in ice during the summer months? eh? Six feet of ice in an area of water that isn't expected to freeze that time of year. That's why they were there!!!!!!!!!! You have no idea of anything you post. You post because you think that makes you smart. I don't need all of that, I use common sense and observed data and so far, wait..............the observed data since the 70's is different than 98% of all models. Statistically, that's all models. So go cry somewhere else about doom and gloom dude, you are just posting mumbo jumbo pointless words.