Arctic Sea Ice is acting weird. Here's the volume as modeled by PIOMAS. {Really this is just an excuse for me to try datawrapper.de, because Excel charts have never looked good and by now look like something from the late 1900s.} But it is strange how the SIV has been basically flat for the last 15 years. (Arctic sea ice extent is just as unusual.)
Here is a conference presentation screen capture I captured from the leading PIOMAS modeler in Sept 2014:
I think this was from a Cliff Maas blog post or comment I read in 2017, but can't find it exactly. The screen capture looks like it's from a conference.
Anyway it's very wrong. Actually the decline, linearly regressed, is about 1/1.5, now 1/6.
Lesson?: beware of making climate predictions unless it's about mean global surface temperature, and even then ENSOs mess you up.
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So why is there a "pause" in Arctic melting? This paper on ESS Open Archive (?) goes into it. It's not peer reviewed, which is unfortunate. Given that, here's the abstract:
So it's maybe worse, going back 20 years (to 2005). Could last 5-10 more years. (Not convenient, given my lifespan.)
So, internal variability, which is nearly impossible to explain to deniers.
6 comments:
In absolute volume, there's not much left at the minimum.
Here's a classic graphic updated for 2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NphVG576grU
Thanks for the video.
Using my little formula for the fractional loss assuming the data are linearly regressed
https://davidappell.blogspot.com/2012/06/long-term-loss-of-arctic-ice.html
I find that the fractional loss for Arctic sea ice extent is -19% over the data set (begins in late 1978), and the fractional loss for Arctic sea ice volume is -52% from the PIOMASS data (data begins in Jan 1979).
These imply a fractional loss for average Arctic sea ice thickness (=total volume/total area) of -44%.
Wow. Over half of Arctic sea ice [as of 1979] is now gone. In just 45 years.
I think we should expect the curve to level off as more and more areas are ice free in the summer. It can't go negative after all.
I'm not sure whether that's playing a role here.
Layzej: I'm not sure what you mean.
Also, has there already been such a (partial) Blue Ocean Event? I haven't seen news of any, but I may have missed it.
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