Arctic Sea Ice Up From Record Low

16 December 2013
Measurements from ESA’s CryoSat satellite show that the volume of Arctic sea ice has significantly increased this autumn.

The volume of ice measured this autumn is about 50% higher compared to last year.

In October 2013, CryoSat measured about 9000 cubic km of sea ice – a notable increase compared to 6000 cubic km in October 2012.

www.esa.int...

This is definitely good news.

I hope it becomes a trend.

I did a search and nothing came up about this recent news.

Dead cat bounce.

BardingTheBard
Dead cat bounce.

Never heard that one before.

???

BardingTheBard
Dead cat bounce.

Huh?


I bet the lazer sats are moving into position to melt some of that ice so they can say "Behold, Global warming"

reply to post by liejunkie01

You are free to look it up. The relevance regarding interpreting "trends" should be immediately apparent.

That said... Don't mind me. I'm just pandering to a certain audience.

This has been posted several times but on tablet in a nice warm tub so will leave the linking to others who can use more than one finger to communicate, heh.

I have no idea where the weather is going except toward more weather.

reply to post by BardingTheBard

This has been posted several times but on tablet in a nice warm tub so will leave the linking to others who can use more than one finger to communicate, heh.

Well my searches all pull up old threads of a year or more older.

I also did a quick scan down the recent post page.

I do not see it.

I thought it would be a good discusion topic.

Thank you for your input and enjoy your "tub".

reply to post by liejunkie01

/salute!

BardingTheBard
reply to post by liejunkie01

 

/salute!

Time to Deny Ignorance.

That thread is a conpletely different study at a different time of the year.

And it is not from ESA's Cryosat satellite
Notice in the article on the thread you linked it says summer ice. In this new article says fall ice.

Spring
Summer
Fall
Winter

This is brand new data on the current situation of the ice, not 4 month old data on the sumner ice.

Thank you for your input and please feel free to read and research the articles linked.

liejunkie01
Time to Deny Ignorance.

Ok then.

liejunkie01
That thread is a conpletely different study at a different time of the year.

And look at what happened. Rather than sustaining or adding to the 60% increase over the previous year... the trend is signalling "only" 50% over the previous year.

Yes, separate studies, but no... not different discussions. If you go into the discussion I linked, you will see where they explore the implications of a bounce such as this in broad terms. Which is what you really posted this thread for, yes?

I hope it becomes a trend.

When there is already a 60% increase during the summer period, is there any surprise there is more than the previous year in the fall period? Of course not. However if the fall is still warmer despite starting with more ice, a reduction in the percentage increase over the previous year relative to the summer increase would be the expected outcome. Which is what we have here.

It may be easy to dismiss being "only" 50% over last fall now as an indication of the opposite trend you hope for... but consider after a 60% increase in the summer if it was only 10% over last fall? Or 1%? What would the suggestive implication be?

The general increase this year is already being discussed and the implications explored. That the fall measurements still show more than last year isn't surprising and doesn't add much to the discussion that hasn't already taken place regarding this year's increased ice measurements.

The discussion is identical for identical reasons... and the data you've provided is easily interpreted to go counter to your hope when taken in a broader perspective rather than an isolated comparison to last year.

BardingTheBard

liejunkie01
Time to Deny Ignorance.

Ok then.

liejunkie01
That thread is a conpletely different study at a different time of the year.

And look at what happened. Rather than sustaining or adding to the 60% increase over the previous year... the trend is signalling "only" 50% over the previous year.

Yes, separate studies, but no... not different discussions. If you go into the discussion I linked, you will see where they explore the implications of a bounce such as this in broad terms. Which is what you really posted this thread for, yes?

I hope it becomes a trend.

When there is already a 60% increase during the summer period, is there any surprise there is more than the previous year in the fall period? Of course not. However if the fall is still warmer despite starting with more ice, a reduction in the percentage increase over the previous year relative to the summer increase would be the expected outcome. Which is what we have here.

It may be easy to dismiss "only" being 50% over last fall now is an indication of the opposite trend you hope for... but consider after a 60% increase in the summer it was only 10% over last fall? Or 1%? What would the suggestive implication be?

The general increase this year is already being discussed and the implications explored. That the fall measurements still show more than last year isn't surprising and doesn't add much to the discussion that hasn't already taken place regarding this year's increased ice measurements.

The discussion is identical for identical reasons... and the data you've provided goes counter to your hope when taken in context rather than an isolated comparison to last year.

edit on 18-12-2013 by BardingTheBard because: (no reason given)

I see you still didn't read the link in the other thread.

You are quoting data from September the 8th at 60%

Please read the article. It was edited on September the 28th to show only a 29% increase in ice for the summer.

The headline even says it at the top of the article.

So I guess that makes your whole response moot..

I love how you came into my thread and completely derailed it from the topic in the article.

Thank you for your input.

Indeed! You are absolutely correct that I had not re-read the article after it had been edited post the thread activity concluding. My apologies and gracious thanks to you for that nudge.

Ok so now working with the same data together. It winds up in the same place.

You stated this:

This is definitely good news.

I hope it becomes a trend.

The article you linked to stated this:

While this increase in ice volume is welcome news, it does not indicate a reversal in the long-term trend.

“It’s estimated that there was around 20 000 cubic kilometres of Arctic sea ice each October in the early 1980s, and so today’s minimum still ranks among the lowest of the past 30 years,” said Professor Andrew Shepherd from University College London, a co-author of the study.

The purpose of my entry into the thread was to indicate that the bump between last year and this year *is* being discussed and what the implications of it are and the variety of ways we can view them.

More ice during the fall than the previous year after a summer which had more ice than the previous year is predictable.

After another search... other threads on ATS that are discussing climate data more broadly are also discussing the overall bump this year. The ones later than the previously linked thread are correcting the 60% error and then continuing from there. However the fundamental discussion and point still come to the same conclusion. The bump isn't an indication of a changing trend and when looked at fully the data continues to support the current trend.

You were quite correct for suggesting me to re-read the article due to it being updated after the last post in that thread had been posted and I thank you for that.

You are quite mistaken if you feel I've completely derailed your thread from the actual meat of the substance you were attempting to explore... which is what if anything can be "hoped" for regarding interpreting any trends.

reply to post by BardingTheBard

You are quite mistaken if you feel I've completely diverted your thread from the actual meat of the substance you were attempting to explore... which is: "What do I choose to hope for from this?"

You are quite mistaken if you think my hoping for a trend is the meat of this discussion.
It seems that now you have continued to over look, or quite possibly worried about saving face, that this is two seasons with vack to back ice growth. If it continues then it Could be a trend.

It seems odd that you pick out my one little statement about me hoping this becomes a trend and try ti make this the topic.

It seems, and this is completely my opinion, that you are more worried about attacking me and my little statement than actually discussing the article in the op.

I feel it should be ok for me "to hope" for a trend since this is the second season of increased ice on more than the the last.

The "meat" is in the article.

liejunkie01
You are quite mistaken if you think my hoping for a trend is the meat of this discussion.

The article itself is pretty straight forward. This year, like many years in the past... "melted less fast" than the previous year.

You act like a summer and fall with less melt than the previous year is somehow interesting relative to previous years. It's not. The trend is because when it *does* drop... it drops harder and faster than when it does grow. The growth/drop runs in cycles... the drops are just faster when they come.

In particular with this year... it's even less substantial of a change in terms of pure volume because it's following on an historic low the previous year. The amount there this year is only substantially higher relative to a dramatically low year. Dynamic systems almost always have a recoil after a dramatic move in one direction.

Now what *is* cool is the satellite itself and what it offers from a tool perspective and the ice volume measurements we couldn't do before. That wasn't what you made the thread about though, you made it about the "growth" so I began discussing the assertions you were offering regarding the "growth" (not you as a person).

liejunkie01
It seems that now you have continued to over look, or quite possibly worried about saving face, that this is two seasons with vack to back ice growth. If it continues then it Could be a trend.

This isn't the first back to back season of increased levels relative to the previous year... yet the trend continues downward. There have even been back to back years of "growth" relative to the years before... before continuing on downward.

liejunkie01
It seems odd that you pick out my one little statement about me hoping this becomes a trend and try ti make this the topic.

The topic is what can be inferred from the "growth". What you inferred quite naturally becomes part of the discussion because it's what you initiated the discussion with. You didn't offer any thoughts on the satellite, new measurements for old vs new ice volume, etc... only your opinion on the "growth".

The article itself is straight forward. Cool satellite can measure more accurately. Data matches expectations of a downward trend long term. That's about all it had to offer.

The implications of this year's melt *is* already being broadly discussed here and while this is cool tech, it doesn't change what has been going on in those discussions and the understandings that have been being reached.

liejunkie01
It seems, and this is completely my opinion, that you are more worried about attacking me and my little statement than actually discussing the article in the op.

The article was quite clear. You opted to offer a hope that goes counter to the conclusions of your own sourced article and I offered perspectives that suggest the view proposed in the OP isn't supportable. Especially when looking beyond just comparing the past two years.

liejunkie01
I feel it should be ok for me "to hope" for a trend since this is the second season of increased ice on more than the the last.

You can hope for whatever you like.

liejunkie01
The "meat" is in the article.

And what does the article say?

Okay, is it more ice? less ice? colder? warmer? what are the trends at both poles? will the changes continue into the future? has this planet really been cooling for the past 15 years as some weblogs say? (such as climate depot) I did read on 'climate etc.' that the 'consensus' was actually 53 out of 1,001 scientists! IPCC just ignored any 'scientist' it did not approve off!!

reply to post by BardingTheBard


Growth in multi-year ice is not the same thing as less summer melt (less melt isn't anything to get excited about at all). We are talking about gain vs less loss. As far as it being a trend? We need 30 years or so to determine that and nothing that factors into the warming of the Arctic has changed.

So what positive can we take away from this data? The growth in ice this year hopefully makes it less likely that summer 2014 will be the summer of no sea ice.

ETA: Arctic sea ice always grows over the winter, however a 50% growth on multi-year ice seems exciting to me.

But...if you listened to AL Gore and his supporters...the poles should and will soon be ice free...melted away.

So any increase in ice volume compared to the year before is actually a good indicator that it's not going all the way south as claimed.

If the "global warming" folks are right...and the global average temperatures are rising due to CO2 emissions by humans...than there shouldn't be any way "back" for the caps. THere shouldn't be an increase in ice volume. Only stagnation or a decrease...

You can't keep warming the planet year by year and have more ice than the year before. At this point...trends are irrelevant.

reply to post by Kali74

This is the first time the volume has been measured in this detail... but we aren't completely blind to the changes in volume over time. Even with the new measurements, the researchers stated it's clear to them the volume is still a low.

What we do have is the very people who presented these findings stating it gives no indication to them of the trend in volume loss they've been observing changing and that the data we do have still shows an overall reduction in volume over time. All they've claimed to have discovered is the rate of volume loss doesn't match the rate of surface loss... but it's still a progressive loss over time.

I repost my original stance on this whole bag: I have no idea where the weather is going except toward more weather.

Anytime I let myself fall into these discussions, it's a general disagreement with both sides regarding their preferred filters of viewing data through and perceived trends.

To even claim to know whether "returning to normal" would be a good thing or not is beyond a reasonable statement. We can't know if returning to "normal" and interacting with *other* shifts in the environment will instead kick off a totally different feedback loop from the one currently feared that would be more destructive, etc.

The best thing to happen in order to ensure an actual livable environment moving forward might be the very melting. Or a total freeze. We just can't know. When anyone looks at the data and makes any determination of whether one direction is "good" or "bad" they are already tainting the lens viewing and interpreting the data.

reply to post by liejunkie01


Oh, it'll trend alright all the way into the next ice-age, and beyond

There's another thread; says, from 2000 when it was still AGW, seasons would warm up , now it's Climate Change and the heat will bring more snow, go figure (found the thread)

I will kinda jump up and say "I told you, I told you" (not really, 'you', but you catch my drift )
We are destined for the next ice age, and "no ones gonna stop me now"
I was, admittedly, taken by Al Gore back in the day, but that opinion quite quickly changed - the vostok graphs and others, to my eyes, show age old cycles and overall cooling trends, that are hard to ignore...
One common misconception however is that people with this mindset have no interest is curbing human climate-altering processes.