A detailed dissection of the 2021 minimum of various Arctic sea ice extent metrics can be found on a dedicated thread. All other Arctic news in September will be found below.
Let’s start with a map of sea ice age at the beginning of August:
Category Archives: News
Facts About the Arctic in August 2021
Let’s first of all take a look at JAXA’s flavour of Arctic sea ice extent:
After reaching lowest extent for the date in early July, the weather in the Arctic Basin was stormy, cloudy and cool compared to other recent years until the last few days of the month:
Here’s the same period in 2020 for comparison purposes:
Consequently the rate of extent loss in the second half of July was significantly less than last year.
Next let’s take a look at AMSR2 concentration:
Facts About the Arctic in July 2021
The JAXA ViSHOP web site was down for maintenance over the weekend. It is now back in action, to reveal Arctic sea ice extent at the lowest for the date in the AMSR2 record:
High resolution AMSR2 area is also now lowest for the date:
as indeed is extent:
According to the Canadian Meteorological Centre the current cyclone has bottomed out with a central mean surface level pressure of 971 hPa:
The Polar Amplification Model Intercomparison Project
The Polar Amplification Model Intercomparison Project (PAMIP for short) is one of several Community Earth System Model (CESM for short) based climate modelling projects.
As the project’s web site points out:
Polar amplification, the phenomenon that external radiative forcing produces a larger change in surface temperature at high latitudes than the global average, is a key aspect of anthropogenic climate change but its causes and consequences are not fully understood.
Read more on The Polar Amplification Model Intercomparison Project…
Koonin’s Unsettled Science – The Movie(s)
We have previously mentioned the Wall Street Journal’s assorted activities promoting the new book by Steven E. Koonin which possesses the rather long winded title of “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters.”
Allegedly “Unsettled Science” by Steven Koonin et al.
In our recent article about the forthcoming G7 Summit in Cornwall we suggested that:
Climate change is top of the G7 agenda along with Covid-19, and you can rest assured that vested interests will not miss any opportunity to promote those interests over the next two months and beyond.
That has indeed proved to be the case! Let us count the ways.
Steven Koonin’s new book “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters” is being promoted (left?), right and centre by a veritable cornucopia of the usual suspects. In an endeavour to explain (to the mythical (wo)man in the street?) the ways in which “A lie will fly around the whole world while the truth is getting its boots on” I’ve performed a Google search for the phrase “climate science has drifted so far out of touch with the actual science as to be absurdly demonstrably false” by way of a demonstration:
65 “demonstrably false” clones of the WSJ article, and counting……
This morning’s update on my “demonstration” Google search.
There are now 241 “demonstrably false” Kooninism clones, and counting……
Read more on Allegedly “Unsettled Science” by Steven Koonin et al….
Stop Attempts To Criminalise Nonviolent Climate Protest?
It may not have come to your attention yet, but a long list of over 400 climate scientists have recently signed an “open letter” to the UK and other Governments requesting:
As academics researching climate and environmental change, we have been encouraged to see increased focus on climate in politics and society in recent years. Considering the current trajectory of planetary change, such attention is welcome, even though action is still lacking. We know that our research alone was not enough for this recent awakening to climate breakdown as an existential crisis for humanity, and recognise that protest movements around the world have raised the alarm…
But around the world today, those who put their voices and bodies on the line to raise the alarm are being threatened and silenced by the very countries they seek to protect. We are gravely concerned about the increasing criminalisation and targeting of climate protestors around the world…
With the upcoming Conference of the Parties of the UN Climate Change Convention (COP26) in Glasgow, and the urgency for global action accelerating as global warming already reaches 1.2°C, 2021 is a critical year for climate governance. It has become abundantly clear that governments don’t act on climate without pressure from civil society: threatening and silencing activists thus seems to be a new form of anti-democratic refusal to act on climate.
See for example this tweet from “Scientist Rebellion”, the militant academic wing of Extinction Rebellion UK?
The signatories to the open letter include a long list of well known names:
We, the undersigned, therefore urge all governments, courts and legislative bodies around the world to halt and reverse attempts to criminalise nonviolent climate protest.
- Professor Julia Steinberger, Universities of Lausanne & Leeds
- Dr Oscar Berglund, University of Bristol
- Distinguished Professor Michael Mann, Penn State University
- Professor Piers Foster, University of Leeds
- Dr Leah Goldfarb, Universite Paris Saclay
- Professor Catherine Mitchell University of Exeter
- Dr Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute
- Professor Stefan Rahmstorf, University of Potsdam
etc. etc.
On Monday the Guardian newspaper published an article about the climate scientist’s open letter:
That article has now disappeared from public view:
Read more on Stop Attempts To Criminalise Nonviolent Climate Protest?…
Facts About the Arctic in April 2021
As part of his March PIOMAS gridded sea ice thickness update Wipneus also produced this graph of sea ice export from the central Arctic via the Fram Strait:
So far this winter export has been remarkably subdued, but that has now changed. A persistent dipole with high pressure over Greenland and low pressure over the Barents Sea is generating strong northerly winds in the Fram Strait, and even bringing some April snow showers to South West England:
Precisely how high the pressure has been over Greenland is the subject of much debate. See for example this discussion on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum about whether a new world high pressure record has just been set. Different weather forecasting models have come to very different conclusions about the mean sea level pressure of a high pressure area situated over the Greenland ice sheet, which reaches an altitude of over 3,000 metres. Here’s GFS for example, showing 1097 hPa at 06Z on April 4th:
whereas the Canadian Meteorological Centre synopsis for the same time shows a mere 1070 hPa:
At least all the assorted models agree that the isobars are closely packed over the Fram Strait, and hence some of the thickest sea ice remaining in the Arctic is currently heading towards oblivion in the far north Atlantic Ocean:
Here’s the US Navy’s sea ice drift forecast for Saturday 10th:
Facts About the Arctic in November 2020
Arctic sea ice volume is of course far more important in the grand scheme of things. However sea extent is easier to measure, and the JAXA AMSR2 flavour thereof has now nudged into second place for the date above 2016:
The PIOMAS gridded thickness numbers have been released, to reveal this end of October thickness map:
and these calculated volume graphs:
These show Arctic sea ice volume to be lowest for the date, even if extent has slipped into 2nd place.
For comparison purposes here too is the latest AWI CryoSat-2/SMOS merged thickness map:
Facts About the Arctic in October 2020
Let’s start this somewhat belated article by looking at Arctic sea ice volume. The mid month PIOMAS gridded thickness numbers have been released to reveal these volume graphs:
Minimum volume for 2021 was 4.03 thousand km3 on September 17th, 2nd lowest in the PSC record.
Modelled volume is now in a “statistical tie” with 2012 for lowest on record for mid October. Here too is the PIOMAS thickness map:
Meanwhile for comparison purposes here is the first merged Cryosat-2/SMOS thickness map of the 2020/21 freezing season, hot off the presses at the Alfred Wegener Institute: