Title: Mcgowanjm Wire 2012 Source:
[None] URL Source:[None] Published:Feb 26, 2012 Author:Various Post Date:2012-02-26 09:15:13 by A K A Stone Keywords:None Views:1371724 Comments:2390
ARCUS June Sea Ice Outlook The New Normal Posted on June 21, 2012 by Anthony Watts
From ARCUS: Im late getting this posted, apologies. WUWT comes in third highest, same position we were last year. My thanks to Helen Wiggins for allowing us to enter again this year. Anthony
With 19 responses for the Pan-Arctic Outlook (plus 6 regional Outlook contributions), the June Sea Ice Outlook projects a September 2012 arctic sea extent median value of 4.4 million square kilometers, with quartiles of 4.3 and 4.7 million square kilometers (Figure 1). This compares to observed September values of 4.6 in 2011, 4.9 in 2010, and 5.4 in 2009. Both the 2012 quartile values and the range (4.1 to 4.9) are quite narrow. The 2012 June Outlook differs from all previous Outlooks in that there are no projections of extent greater than 5.0. It is always important to note for context that all 2012 estimates are well below the 19792007 September mean of 6.7 million square kilometers.
Figure 1. Distribution of individual Pan-Arctic Outlook values (June Report) for September 2012 sea ice extent.
Download High Resolution Version of Figure 1.
Individual responses are based on a range of methods: statistical, numerical models, comparison with previous rates of sea ice loss, composites of several approaches, estimates based on various non-sea ice datasets and trends, and subjective information. The consensus is for a continued downward trend of September sea ice. It seems that the time may have come to declare that the arctic sea ice has in fact reached a New Normal. The physical justification for this statement is based primarily on the loss of old, thick sea ice and the increased mobility of sea ice. An expanded discussion of sea ice age and thickness is included in this months full report, which includes new sea ice thickness data from NASA IceBridge aircraft flights in MarchApril 2012.
Credit for Sea Ice Outlook Report: Arctic Research Consortium of the US (ARCUS)
The Sea Ice Outlook is organized by the Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH) and the Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S. (ARCUS), with volunteer efforts of Outlook contributors. Funding is provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
You are aware are you not that there is always a summer sea ice melt.
SJN
Early cartographers were unsure whether to draw the region around the North Pole as land (as in Johannes Ruysch's map of 1507, or Gerardus Mercator's map of 1595) or water (as with Martin Waldseemüller's world map of 1507). The fervent desire of European merchants for a northern passage to "Cathay" (China) caused water to win out, and by 1723 mapmakers such as Johann Homann featured an extensive "Oceanus Septentrionalis" at the northern edge of their charts.
The few expeditions to penetrate much beyond the Arctic Circle in this era added only small islands, such as Novaya Zemlya (11th century) and Spitsbergen (1596), though since these were often surrounded by pack-ice their northern limits were not so clear. The makers of navigational charts, more conservative than some of the more fanciful cartographers, tended to leave the region blank, with only fragments of known coastline sketched in.
This lack of knowledge of what lay north of the shifting barrier of ice gave rise to a number of conjectures. In England and other European nations, the myth of an "Open Polar Sea" was persistent. John Barrow, long time Second Secretary of the British Admiralty, promoted exploration of the region from 1818 to 1845 in search of this."
-wiki
Yeah. Everybody went swimming in the Arctic in Summer to escape the heat.....;}
We dont have enough long-term data to say what is usual with regard to ice coverage in the arctic or understand the full extent of its natural variation.
We dont have enough long-term data to say what is usual with regard to ice coverage in the arctic or understand the full extent of its natural variation.
According to pollen-based climate reconstructions, summer temperatures and annual precipitation during the super interglacials were about 4 to 5 degrees C warmer and about 12 inches (300 mm) wetter than during normal interglacials. The super interglacial climates suggest that it's virtually impossible for the Greenland's ice sheet to have existed in its present form at those times.
Simulations using a state-of-the-art climate model show that the high temperature and precipitation
during the super interglacials cannot be explained by Earth´s orbital parameters or variations in atmospheric greenhouse gases alone,
************which geologists typically see driving the glacial/interglacial pattern during ice ages. This suggests additional climate feedbacks are at work. **************************
The scientists suspect the trigger for intense interglacials might be in Antarctica.
Earlier work by the international ANDRILL program discovered recurring intervals when the West Antarctic Ice Sheet melted. The current study shows that some of these events match remarkably well with the super interglacials in the Arctic.
ScienceDaily (June 21, 2012) Intense warm climate intervals--warmer than scientists thought possible--have occurred in the Arctic over the past 2.8 million years.
That result comes from the first analyses of the longest sediment cores ever retrieved on land. They were obtained from beneath remote, ice-covered Lake Elgygytgyn (pronounced Elgee-git-gin) (Lake E) in the northeastern Russian Arctic.
"Note: Ali Latifi, a freelance journalist based in Doha, was reporting from the scene of a Taliban attack on a hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan last week in which 23 people were killed. He tells the story of the attack through his interaction with Haider, an Afghan who fought against the Soviet invasion but now guards a cell phone tower from threats that include insurgent sabotage. The story is printed below with permission.
By Ali M. Latifi
Kabul, Afghanistan Had this been any other Friday, Mohammed Haider would have been rushing from his home in Paghman to the cell phone antenna he guards day in and day out.
Any other Friday and the grey-haired Haider would be watching hundreds of cars on their way to picnics in the scenic Qargha lake and by the fountains of Paghman, a town just outside Kabul.
But this wasnt any other Friday, and Haider, after being kept up all night from gunshots and blasts at the nearby Spozhmai Hotel, headed to his post guarding an Etisalat telecom tower.
There he stood, as he always has, atop a hill overlooking the hotel that went from being the site of a joyful twenty-second birthday party to the scene of the first Taliban attack specifically targeting civilians since the latest round of war erupted in Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001......;}
And here's what happened....
OVer 300 NGO's, 'missionaries', diplomats, afghan interior, and NATO, were shot dead.
Afghan Commander, anonymous, 'I have never seen so much destruction.'