
Visualizing the Shrinking Sea Ice - uptown
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/09/mapbox-arctic-sea-ice-minimum-over-time/407884/?single_page=true
======
AuLaVache
>The chart’s data comes from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, a
collaboration between NOAA and the University of Colorado. This is the oldest
data set for sea ice available—it goes back to 1978. (That’s a pretty long
time, at least for satellites: Landsat, the longest continuously operated
satellite-data program, only started six years earlier.)

The satellite era for Arctic ice did not start in 1979. It started in 1973.
The 1990 IPCC report shows a graph of it:

[http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_chapte...](http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_chapter_07.pdf)

[see page 30 of the .pdf (= page 224 of the IPCC report) Figure 7.20a]

It shows the ice grew ~1.5 million km before 1979, and has declined since
then. So starting the record in 1979 (at a peak) is a bit of a cheat.

>Mapbox has also placed the sea-ice levels next to Earth’s mean atmospheric
temperature.

Also be wary of talk of _average atmospheric_ arctic temperature increases.
They certainly have increased, but that obscures the whole picture. It's only
in the summer that arctic air temperatures rise above freezing, and summer
temperatures have not increased at all since 1958. See all years here:

[http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php](http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php)

It's variations in winter, spring and autumn (when air temperatures are still
__well __below freezing) that has raised the _average_ temperature. In my view
the ice is probably mainly melting from below from heat transported from the
Atlantic. Less insulating ice allows water (~ +4c) to warm the colder air
above it. It's not melting from above from increased air temperatures as the
article seems to imply.

[18.55 Edited for idiocy]

~~~
joering2
Aaah the never ending debate about global warming. It's been proven to be a
scam so many times and everyone has their favorites.

To me when NASA came and admit the rising temperatures on Earth do match up
with rise of temperatures on most other planets of our system, including Mars,
because the Sun has its rising/declining activity patters and some go into
thousands of years, this was clear indication humans are like a drop of blood
in a Pacific Ocean. AFAIK, there are not human-made factories on Mars.

End of discussion.

~~~
tstactplsignore
There's no evidence that Mars is exhibiting long term warming trends, and most
bodies in the solar system are not warming. The sun is currently in a cooling
cycle, and all evidence indicates that solar forcing has a much lower impact
on rising temperatures than increased greenhouse gases.

Explained here:

[http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-other-
planets...](http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-other-planets-
solar-system-intermediate.htm)

It took me about 10 seconds of googling to find the answer explained easily
for the layperson as to why you were wrong- and yet, you've never so much as
taken that basic step, let alone examine any of the scientific literature on
the topic, and you immediately jumped to the conclusion that the overwhelming
majority of scientists who study climate and Earth sciences worldwide are
wrong. There have been hundreds of papers written on the topic, all by experts
who reach conclusions that disagree with you, and you examined none of that
research. It is the sheer arrogance of the climate change denier that is so
startling to me.

~~~
AuLaVache
>indicates that solar forcing has a much lower impact on rising temperatures
than increased greenhouse gases.

Could be. But I would argue that sites like SkS, which are fairly partisan in
their views like to look _only_ at TSI and ignore other solar factors.

The Sun effects us in many unexpected ways. See for example here:
[http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-
nasa/2013/08...](http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-
nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/)

And here:

[http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/5/054...](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/5/054022;jsessionid=F87A9539A4F89BEF6AA70596DC97E24D.c1)

The last link (looking at the UV part of the spectrum) could explain the
warming of the Atlantic we have been experiencing, See this graph of the AMO
(yes, not the same as the NOA outlined in the paper - but related) and NH
temperatures:

[http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-
amo/from:1960/mean:30/...](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-
amo/from:1960/mean:30/plot/hadsst2nh/from:1960/mean:30/plot/hadcrut3nh/from:1960/mean:30)

The AMO does seems to be "externally forced" I.e. not related to CO2, but
probably/possibly some solar related mechanism.

[http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140225/ncomms4323/full/nco...](http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140225/ncomms4323/full/ncomms4323.html)

The whole thing is damn complicated. Different parts of the spectrum impact on
different parts of atmospheric chemistry (e.g. ozone), and inter-relate with
components like earth and solar magnetic fields, particles, GCRs, etc.

Science is never settled (as SkS would have us believe) it's still in
progress.

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phowat
If you want to see this in video, I recommend the documentary "Chasing Ice".
It's available on Netflix.

~~~
willyk
agreed, it's a super documentary

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ams6110
At the same time (well, within a couple of years) antarctic sea ice is at
record high levels

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-
gang/wp...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-
gang/wp/2013/09/23/antarctic-sea-ice-hit-35-year-record-high-saturday/)

~~~
andyjohnson0
...which, as the article notes, is not necessarily good news: the southern
ocean is warming.

~~~
talmand
What I got out of it is what I usually see with my attempts at being
objective; we know this is happening, we don't fully understand why, and we
don't fully know the pros and cons. There are guesses and theories, many of
which I'm sympathetic to, that too many people are willing to move forward
without being cautious.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
The house is burning down, and we should be cautious?!

~~~
talmand
Yes. A horribly mismanaged attempt at putting out a house fire can cause
unnecessary problems for the rest of the neighborhood.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
But this is a house we can't actually leave. That changes the equation
completely.

~~~
talmand
No it doesn't. Regardless of your particular situation, if you mismanage the
solution, then chances are you are only making the problem worse.

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guard-of-terra
Maybe Northern Sea Route will become viable after all.

------
chrisau
Why since 2005, are things the wrong way around? Increases in temperature
match with increases in ice levels??!!

e.g. 2005 to 2007 saw a 0.09 decrease in temperature above norm, and a
1.16million km2 decrease in ice?

Then as the temperature increased, the ice did too, up to 2010, then temp and
ice decline to 2012.

Since 2012 temp has been rising again and so has the ice.

And you wonder why there's skeptics out there?!

You can clearly see the overall trends of heat rising and ice decreasing, but
graphs like this shouldn't be thrown out to the masses without reasonable
explanation of the anomalies of the last 10 years.

------
ddoolin
Wow, The period of 2009 to 2012 was not kind for the ice at all. What caused
such a large decrease?

~~~
ovis
One contributor is an increase in the amount of heat flowing from the North
Atlantic into the Arctic ocean. Another factor is that the volume of old,
thick ice has been declining as well, so the ice present in 2015 is younger
than what was present in 2000. This ice is less likely to persist through the
summer melt season.

