The Arctic sets yet another record low maximum winter extent
The National Snow and Ice Data Center is part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder. NSIDC scientists provide Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis content, with partial support from NASA.
BOULDER, Colo., March 28, 2016—Arctic sea ice was at a record low maximum extent for the second straight year, according to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA.
"I've never seen such a warm, crazy winter in the Arctic," said NSIDC director Mark Serreze. "The heat was relentless." Air temperatures over the Arctic Ocean for the months of December, January and February were 2 to 6 degrees Celsius (4 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit) above average in nearly every region.
Sea ice extent over the Arctic Ocean averaged 14.52 million square kilometers (5.607 million square miles) on March 24, beating last year's record low of 14.54 million square kilometers (5.612 million square miles) on February 25. Unlike last year, the peak was later than average in the 37-year satellite record, setting up a shorter than average ice melt season for the coming spring and summer.
According to NSIDC, sea ice extent was below average throughout the Arctic, except in the Labrador Sea, Baffin Bay, and Hudson Bay. It was especially low in the Barents Sea. As noted by Ingrid Onarheim at the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research in Bergen, Norway: "A decrease in Barents Sea ice extent for this winter was predicted from the influence of warm Atlantic waters from the Norwegian Sea."
Scientists are watching extent in this area because it will help them understand how a slower Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) may affect Arctic sea ice. "Some studies suggest that decreased heat flux of warm Atlantic waters could lead to a recovery of all Arctic sea ice in the near future," said NSIDC senior research scientist Julienne Stroeve. "I think it will have more of a winter impact and could lead to a temporary recovery of winter ice extent in the Barents and Kara seas."
This year's maximum extent is 1.12 million square kilometers (431,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average of 15.64 million square kilometers (6.04 million square miles) and 13,000 square kilometers (5,000 square miles) below the previous lowest maximum that occurred last year.
This late winter, ice extent growth in the Arctic has been sluggish. "Other than a brief spurt in late February, extent growth has been slow for the past six weeks," said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Meier is an affiliate scientist at NSIDC and is part of NSIDC's Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis team.
Ice extent increases through autumn and winter, and the maximum typically occurs in mid March. Sea ice then retreats through spring and summer and shrinks to its smallest or minimum extent typically by mid September.
The September Arctic minimum began drawing attention in 2005 when it first shrank to a record low extent over the period of satellite observations. It broke the record again in 2007, and then again in 2012. The March Arctic maximum has typically received less attention. That changed last year when the maximum extent was the lowest in the satellite record.
"The Arctic is in crisis. Year by year, it's slipping into a new state, and it's hard to see how that won't have an effect on weather throughout the Northern Hemisphere," said Ted Scambos, NSIDC lead scientist.
NSIDC will release a full analysis of the winter season in early April, once monthly data are available for March.
For relevant high-resolution images, please visit the web version of this press release.
To read the current analysis from NSIDC scientists, see NSIDC Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis web page.
For more about Arctic sea ice, see NSIDC's Arctic Sea Ice 101.
See the NASA release here.
View the NASA animation here.
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I'm unclear about the IPCC's special use of the word "projection". David accurately quoted the IPCC as saying that all the modelers have are projections for the equilibrium state, after all forcing and feedbacks have played out -- which takes centuries, at least. Trying to interpret their results after 10 or 20 years is meaningless, because these models were never built to make such predictions.
ReplyDeleteIn that case, a 15-year long slowdown in warming doesn't significantly undermine the models. By the same token, a record high temperature and record low Arctic ice extent don't significantly support the models. So, within any decadal time span we can only take the models on faith (or not) because there can't be enough data to accept or reject the models.
Somehow, this seems to be too strong. Researchers on every side do look at data for periods shorter than 10 to 20 years. E.g., the latest IPCC report brought the bottom of the likely range for sensitivity down and also eliminated a best estimate of sensitivity, because of what the most recent data showed.
Cheers
"In that case, a 15-year long slowdown in warming doesn't significantly undermine the models. By the same token, a record high temperature and record low Arctic ice extent don't significantly support the models."
ReplyDeleteYou're wrong yet again, David. The record high temperatures and record low Arctic ice extent are based on at least 100 years of data.
"Somehow, this seems to be too strong. Researchers on every side do look at data for periods shorter than 10 to 20 years"
ReplyDeleteOnly to shut-up deniers.
10-20 years is too small of an interval to gauge climate change, because too many natural factors oscillate with a period of that or slightly larger, especially the PDO and AMO.
Doing so is a study about the noise not the signal.
Really, this should not be difficult to understand.
David, I'm not sure where to stick this but perhaps you and other science reporters need to get together and perform an intervention on Eric Holthaus. In what is not a bad article on coral bleaching he apparently was compelled to write this:
ReplyDelete"Coral bleaching and record-low Arctic sea ice are leading indicators that we’re rapidly leaving behind the stable climate we’ve enjoyed for the last few million years."
Last few million years? Has he not heard about the ice ages? The point is that the climate has been relatively stable since the Holocene. That's not millions of years.
He's giving climate reporting a bad name.