Tag Archives: Temperature

Facts About the Arctic in April 2022

April 8, 2022NewsAWI, Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, CryoSat-2, Extent, Mackenzie River, MSLP, NSIDC, PIOMAS, SMOS, Snow Cover, Temperature, Thickness, VolumeJim Hunt

The April edition of the NSIDC’s Arctic Sea Ice News summarises March 2022 as follows:

Average Arctic sea ice extent for March 2022 was 14.59 million square kilometers (5.63 million square miles), ranking ninth lowest in the satellite record…
The total decline, after a series of small ups and downs, was only 250,000 square kilometers (96,500 square miles):

Counter to what might be expected given the very slow rate of sea ice loss over the month as a whole, air temperatures at the 925 millibar level (about 2,500 feet above the surface) were above average over all of the Arctic Ocean:

March temperatures were up to 9 degrees Celsius (16 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than average north of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, up to 6 degrees Celsius (11 degrees Fahrenheit) above average in the East Siberian Sea, but up to 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above average over a wide area.

The key features of the sea level pressure pattern were high pressure (an anticyclone) over the central Arctic Ocean, a trough of low pressure extending into the Barents Sea, and an unusually high pressure over Northern Europe:

While having an anticyclone over the central Arctic Ocean is quite typical for this time of year, the combination of the high pressure over northern Europe and the pressure trough to the west led to a strong pressure gradient, leading to strong winds from south through the Norwegian and Barents Seas…
This can be tied to the extreme warm event over the Arctic Ocean seen in the middle of the month, associated with strong water vapor transport and the passage of several strong cyclones.

The Polar Science Center at the University of Washington has also released the PIOMAS volume data for March 2022:

Average Arctic sea ice volume in March 2022 was 21,700 km³. This value is the 6th lowest on record for March, about 2,200 km³ above the record set in 2017. Monthly ice volume was 38% below the maximum in 1979 and 25% below the mean value for 1979-2021:

Ice growth anomalies for March 2022 continued to be at the upper end of the most recent decade with a mean ice thickness (above 15 cm thickness) at the middle of recent values:

The ice thickness anomaly map for March 2022 relative to 2011-2020 divides the Arctic in two halves with positive anomalies in the “Western Arctic” but negative anomalies in “Eastern Arctic”. A narrow band of negative anomalies remains along the coast of North of Greenland but positive anomaly exists north of Baffin Island.

CryoSat 2 ice thickness shows an similar pattern of sea ice thickness anomalies though the areas North of Greenland and Baffin Bay show substantial differences:

[Edit – April 10th]

Here are the latest graphs of our favourite “high resolution” AMSR2 metrics, which combine recent data from the Alfred Wegener Institute with historical data from the University of Hamburg:

As you can see, there have indeed been a few ups and downs! Click the image below to see a 10 Mb animation of ice motion over the last few weeks:

The obvious point to note at the moment is that there are currently long flaw leads on both the Siberian and Canadian sides of the Arctic Ocean. The animation also reveals episodes of open water in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, as well as north of Franz Josef Land and Svalbard.

The ice in those areas is still very thin on the latest AWI CryoSat-2/SMOS sea ice thickness map:

[Edit – April 11th]

Here too is the latest AWI CryoSat-2/SMOS volume graph:

The reanalysed data is now showing something of a surge towards the end of February.

[Edit – April 23rd]

Here’s the last “near real time” AWI CryoSat-2/SMOS Arctic sea ice thickness map for Spring 2022:

The significantly thinner areas in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas are even more pronounced than previously. Here also is the associated CS2/SMOS volume graph:

The 2022 maximum volume based on NRT data is 19719 km³ on April 5th. Expect that to be revised upwards when the reanalysed data is ultimately published.

Going back to 2 dimensions, the assorted “ups and downs” now seem to have resolved into the melting season proper:

The peripheral sea have been responsible for most of the recent decline:

However as mentioned above, the Chukchi Sea has been experiencing some ups and downs of its own. Perhaps the sun is now high enough in the sky for the most recent “down” to stick around for the summer?

“True colour” image of the Chukchi Sea on April 21st from the MODIS instrument on the Terra satellite

[Edit – April 24th]

Over the last couple of days some open water has appeared in the Beaufort Sea off the Mackenzie Delta:

“True colour” image of the Beaufort Sea on April 23rd from the MODIS instrument on the Terra satellite

[Edit – April 25th]

Especially for Taylor, here’s the GFS Arctic snow depth forecast for 10 days into the future:

See in particular the Beaufort and Chukchi areas.

Please also see the new open thread for May 2022

Facts About the Arctic in March 2022

March 7, 2022NewsAMSR2, Antarctic, AWI, Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, Concentration, CryoSat-2, Extent, Fram Strait, HALO-(AC)³, JAXA, North Pole, SMOS, Temperature, Thickness, VolumeJim Hunt

For detailed analysis of Arctic sea ice extent over the next few weeks please see the 2022 maximum extent thread. However to get the new open thread going here is the current JAXA/ViSHOP extent graph:

It’s looking more and more as though the real maximum for 2022 occurred close the false peak on February 23rd.

Arctic sea ice volume will keep increasing for a while longer. Here is the current AWI CryoSat-2/SMOS volume graph:

The recent “flat line” in extent is in part due to recent events on the Pacific periphery of the Arctic. Take a look at this animation of AMSR2 sea ice concentration:

The gap varies depending on how the wind blows, but there is still evidence of open water (or very thin ice) along the shore of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. Here’s the Mackenzie Delta and the adjacent Beaufort Sea on March 5th:

Continue reading →

Steve Koonin’s Unsettled History of US Temperature

May 20, 2021TemperatureAR5, CSSR, Heat waves, IPCC, LSAT, Steve Koonin, Temperature, WRITJim Hunt

Regular readers will no doubt have noticed by now that here at the Great White Con we are publishing a series of reviews of Steven E. Koonin‘s new book “Unsettled”? Today we move on to the topic of Land-Surface Air Temperature (LSAT for short). Here is an extract from the very first page of the book:

Yes, it’s true that the globe is warming, and that humans are exerting a warming influence upon it. But beyond that—to paraphrase the classic movie The Princess Bride: “I do not think ‘The Science’ says what you think it says.”
For example, both the research literature and government reports that summarize and assess the state of climate science say clearly that heat waves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900, and that the warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past fifty years. When I tell people this, most are incredulous. Some gasp. And some get downright hostile.

Here once again is an extract from page 23 of the Kindle edition of Steve’s book:

The [IPCC] assessment reports literally define The Science for non-experts. Given the intensive authoring and review processes, any reader would naturally expect that their assessments and summaries of the research literature are complete, objective, and transparent—the “gold standard.” In my experience, the reports largely do meet that expectation, and so much of the detail in the first part of this book, the science story, is drawn from them.

First of all let me remind Steve that the United States does not constitute the entirety of our planet. In particular the Arctic is warming a lot faster than mid latitudes in general and the US in particular. Using WRIT once again to produce our own time series, we can compare and contrast longer term temperature records between the Continental United States and the Arctic (including both land and ocean above the Arctic circle):

Also note that for some reason Steve makes no mention of US “coolest temperatures” and/or “cold waves” since 1900. I don’t know about you, but the top graph certainly suggest to me that “the warmest temperatures in the US have risen in the past fifty years”.

Let’s see how Steve explains himself. For that we have to wait until Chapter 5, catchily entitled “Hyping the Heat”. Therein no mention is made of recent temperature increases across the Arctic, but we are able to read in the introductory paragraphs that:

We can all agree the globe has gotten warmer over the past several decades. Here’s another summary statement from the IPCC’s AR5:

[S]ince about 1950 it is very likely that the numbers of cold days and nights have decreased and the numbers of warm days and nights have increased . . . there is medium confidence that globally the length and frequency of warm spells, including heat waves, has increased since the middle of the 20th century. (IPCC. AR5 WGI Section 2.6.1.)

Then there is a long discussion about what Steve apparently perceives to be shortcomings in the “The US government’s most recent assessment report, the 2017 Climate Science Special Report (CSSR)”. Steve is apparently well qualified in physics, so presumably he is able to comprehend these equations?

US ≠ Global
CSSR ≠ AR5

For those of you less familiar with the arcane language of mathematics and physics that translates to “the climate of the continental United States is not identical to Arctic climate or typical of the climate of Planet Earth as a whole” and hence “US Governmental climate reports are not necessarily typical of ‘Intergovernmental’ climate assessments”.

Next let’s check what Steve’s “gold standard for The Science” has to say on this topic. According to section 2.6.1 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth Assessment Report, as cited by Steve:

A large amount of evidence continues to support the conclusion that most global land areas analysed have experienced significant warming of both maximum and minimum temperature extremes since about 1950 (Donat et al., 2013c). Changes in the occurrence of cold and warm days (based on daily maximum temperatures) are generally less marked (Figure 2.32):

Figure 2.32 | Trends in annual frequency of extreme temperatures over the period 1951–2010, for (a) cold nights (TN10p), (b) cold days (TX10p), (c) warm nights (TN90p) and (d)
warm days (TX90p) (Box 2.4, Table 1). Trends were calculated only for grid boxes that had at least 40 years of data during this period and where data ended no earlier than 2003.
Grey areas indicate incomplete or missing data. Black plus signs (+) indicate grid boxes where trends are significant (i.e., a trend of zero lies outside the 90% confidence interval).
The data source for trend maps is HadEX2 (Donat et al., 2013c) updated to include the latest version of the European Climate Assessment data set (Klok and Tank, 2009). Beside
each map are the near-global time series of annual anomalies of these indices with respect to 1961–1990 for three global indices data sets: HadEX2 (red); HadGHCND (Caesar et al., 2006; blue) and updated to 2010 and GHCNDEX (Donat et al., 2013a; green). Global averages are only calculated using grid boxes where all three data sets have at least 90%
of data over the time period. Trends are significant (i.e., a trend of zero lies outside the 90% confidence interval) for all the global indices shown.

To paraphrase The Princess Bride once again: “I do not think ‘The Science’ says what Steven E. Koonin says it says in ‘Unsettled’”.

Unsettling, is it not?

Facts About the Arctic in February 2018

February 3, 2018VolumeAMSR2, Area, Extent, NSIDC, PIOMAS, Temperature, Thickness, Volume, Waves, WipneusJim Hunt

Whilst the official PIOMAS volume figures for January have yet to be released Wipneus has worked his usual magic on the gridded thickness numbers to reveal:

not to mention the calculated volume:

and the volume anomaly:

As Wipneus puts it:

Estimated from the thickness data, the latest value is from 31st of January: 17.57 [1000 km3], which is the second lowest value for that day, 2017 is lowest by a rather large margin at 16.16 [1000 km3].

Here are the “measured” thickness maps from SMOS:

and CryoSat-2:

Here are the end of January Arctic wide high resolution AMSR2 graphs based on University of Hamburg data:

In addition, since it’s that time of year, here too is Wipneus’ NSIDC global sea ice extent:

The minimum thus far is very slightly above last year’s value, but perhaps like last year there will be a “double dip”?

Getting back to the Arctic, here is the DMI >80N temperature plot for January:

together with the associated freezing degree days graph:

Here’s a video showing the effect of the mid January cyclones on the sea ice in the Fram Strait and north of Svalbard:

Finally, for the moment at least, here is the current Fram Strait surf forecast for 12:00 UTC on February 5th:

Those maps shows 10 meter high, 15 second period waves heading straight for the ice edge north of Svalbard.

[Edit – February 7th]

The latest edition of Arctic Sea Ice News has been published. As the NSIDC put it:

January of 2018 began and ended with satellite-era record lows in Arctic sea ice extent, resulting in a new record low for the month. Combined with low ice extent in the Antarctic, global sea ice extent is also at a record low.

Air temperatures at the 925 hPa level (about 2,500 feet above sea level) remained unusually high over the Arctic Ocean. Nearly all of the region was at least 3 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit) or more above average. The largest departures from average of more than 9 degrees Celsius (16 degrees Fahrenheit) were over the Kara and Barents Seas, centered near Svalbard. On the Pacific side, air temperatures were about 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above average. By contrast, 925 hPa temperatures over Siberia were up to 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) below average. The warmth over the Arctic Ocean appears to result partly from a pattern of atmospheric circulation bringing in southerly air, and partly from the release of heat into the atmosphere from open water areas.

[Edit – February 10th]

The University of Hamburg’s high resolution AMSR2 derived area is bouncing back after the recent cyclone, but extent is currently still declining:

The recent drop in Arctic sea ice extent has pushed the NSIDC global extent to a new all time (satellite era!) low:

The January 2018 Fram Strait Cyclones

January 13, 2018Uncategorized, WavesAvalanche, Cyclone, Fram Strait, Greenland, Longyearbyen, Sentinel, Svalbard, TemperatureJim Hunt

We’ve covered similar events in the recent past, but this one looks like it will take the proverbial biscuit.

Here’s the 6 hour wave forecast for the Fram Strait from 12:00 UTC this afternoon:

Look at the scales carefully then compare the wave height and period with previous similar events. Here’s the cause of those giant waves, two powerful cyclones off Greenland pumping heat and moisture northwards from a long way south:

Also bear in mind the current sea ice area around Svalbard:

and the current weather forecast for the capital Longyearbyen:

Note in particular the anomalously high temperatures and the severe weather warnings for both rain and avalanches. In the middle of January.

Finally, for the moment at least, here’s a Sentinel 1B image of the sea ice in the Fram Strait earlier this morning:

[Edit – January 14th]

The temperature in Longyearbyen is forecast to drop below freezing point early on Tuesday and then remain there, which I guess counts as good news?

However the southernmost of the two cyclones off Greenland is now down to a central MSLP of 942 hPa:

[Edit – January 15th]

The cyclone now centred near Iceland looks as though it bottomed out at a MLSP of 939 hPa earlier today:

Watch this space!

Expensive ENSO Expertise

December 17, 2016TemperatureBob Tisdale, David Rose, El Nino, Judith Curry, TemperatureJim Hunt

Regular readers will be aware that in a recent article in the Mail on Sunday David Rose quoted Professor Judith Curry as stating that:

The record warm years of 2015 and 2016 were primarily caused by the super El Nino

The article in question also included this graph:

It looks as though David’s left hand doesn’t know what his right hand is doing. Was the 2015 El Niño “Super” or “Very strong”? And how about the 1997/98 El Niño. Was that one really merely “Strong”?

We sought the professional opinion of an eminent expert in such matters, according to David Rose at least – Professor Judith Curry. Here’s how we got on, firstly at Prof. Curry’s “Climate Etc.” blog:

Us:

Since you mention the subject, I was wondering if Dr. Curry could take a look at the “the authoritative Met Office ‘HADCRUT4’ surface record” mentioned in David Rose’s latest Mail article and explain how it justifies her “The record warm years of 2015 and 2016 were primarily caused by the super El Nino” remark quoted in his previous one:

Post-Truth Global and Arctic Temperatures

Them:

“No answer!” was the stern reply! We tried again on a different thread at Prof. Judy’s place.

Us:

Bill the Frog has asked me to check the objective criteria Prof. Curry uses for differentiating between “weak”, “strong”, “very strong” and “super” El Niños. Likewise for La Niñas.

Can you assist by any chance Ristvan? Can Judith?

Them:

JH, Sure could. But first prove you are just not more loser snark.
Enso is variously but in eqch case precisely defined. I defer to Bob Tisdale comcerning details. And you?

Us:

I defer to the BoM in the first instance. How about Judith?

A different Them:

Jim Hunt

I expect the answers you are looking for are in this article by Judith back in 2014

https://judithcurry.com/2014/05/07/el-ninos-and-la-ninas-and-global-warming/

Us:

Thanks Tony, but that’s not Judith’s expert opinion on “objective criteria” either.

She did respond to my similar request on Twitter, but I’m still none the wiser I’m afraid:

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/809766243486105600
https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/809769266081923072

Them:

“No answer!” was the stern reply!

December 2016 Arctic Report Card

December 16, 2016Ice AgeAge, AGU, AMSR2, Area, Don Perovich, Extent, NSIDC, PIOMAS, Temperature, VolumeJim Hunt

This is the Great White Con version as opposed to the NOAA version published during the Fall AGU conference earlier this week, although there is some overlap.

Hot off the presses, here’s how Arctic sea ice age has progressed over the last year and a bit:

The 4 and 5 year old ice looks to be edging away from the area north of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago towards the Fram Strait. Here’s the current CryoSat-2 Arctic sea ice thickness map:

Almost no ice over 2 meters thick to be found in the Beaufort sector or anywhere on the Siberian side of the Arctic. Here’s the current AMSR2 Arctic sea ice area graph:

Lowest for the date in the satellite record. Here’s the NSIDC’s long term trend in November sea ice extent:

Act 1 of a 3 act play according to Don Perovich at AGU. Here’s the current PIOMAS Arctic sea ice volume anomaly graph:

Lowest for the date in the satellite record. Here’s NOAA’s Arctic and global surface temperature graph:

Warmest in a record going back to 1900. Here’s the current DMI >80N surface temperature graph:

and here’s the current Arctic surface temperature anomaly map:

Finally, for the moment at least, here’s global sea ice area just for good measure:

Need I say more? How about this:

Ice has no agenda. It just melts.
Out of the labs and into the streets?

Arctic Sea Ice News from AGU

December 13, 2016ExpeditionsAGU, El Nino, R/V Lance, Storms, Temperature, WavesJim Hunt

I just watched the live stream of the fall 2016 AGU press conference about the findings of the “First results from the Norwegian Young Sea ICE Expedition”.

Here’s the associated video of the expedition:

Here are the bullet points:

Initial results suggest that the thinner and younger ice is altogether different from older multiyear ice. It moves faster, breaks up easier, melts faster, and is more vulnerable to storms. This has important consequences for the Arctic as a whole, as our current knowledge is largely based on information from the “old Arctic.”

The Atmosphere

• For the first time, N-ICE2015 researchers directly observed large winter storms over sea ice and saw that they have significant effects on the young, thinner ice. The high winds create a lot of stress on the sea ice by pushing it around and breaking it up.
• One winter storm raised the air temperature from -40 F to +32 F in less than 48 hours, while the moisture in the air increased 10 times. All of these factors significantly warm the surface of the snow, even in mid-winter, and slow the growth of ice.

The Sea Ice and Snow Cover

• Researchers on the drifting ice camps found more snow on top of the ice than expected. This insulated the ice from the atmosphere, slowing its growth in winter and surface melt in summer.
• The sea ice was sometimes flooded by seawater as the large snow load pushed the thinner ice below sea level.
• The thinner sea ice was more dynamic than researchers have seen before. This could mean more ridging but also more cracks and leads between ice floes.

The Ocean

• Winter storms caused the sea ice to drift so fast that it increased mixing of the water beneath the ice. Deeper, warmer water was mixed up closer to the sea ice, causing it to melt from below despite winter air temperatures that were below freezing.
• Researchers saw summer storms stir up deep warm waters and melt as much as 25 cm of ice in a single day.

The Ecosystem

• For the first time, N-ICE2015 researchers observed an algae bloom under snow-covered pack ice. Thinner and more dynamic Arctic sea ice allows more light transmission to the ocean, especially through cracks and leads. This triggers earlier phytoplankton blooms under the snow-covered ice.
• The phytoplankton species that dominated the under-ice bloom does not sink to the deep ocean. Such shifts in phytoplankton species composition, associated with early under-ice phytoplankton blooms, could thus have important implications for the strength of the biological carbon pump in the Arctic.

There was also mention of the “waves in ice” event that the R/V Lance experienced back in June 2015:

P.S. A recording of the N-ICE2015 press conference is now available:

Next up on the live stream is was the 2016 “Arctic Report Card“. Here’s the associated video:

No doubt because of the recent controversy concerning the effects of the 2015/16 El Niño the first graphic that caught my eye was this one:

In the question and answer session the obvious question was asked. The answer was that while attribution is difficult the 2015/16 El Niño did have some effect on Arctic sea ice. However currently we’ve only seen “the first act of a 3 act play”. Act 2 will be the maximum extent in March.

In answer to another question, a focus of research over the next 10 years should be the interactions between mid latitudes and the Arctic.

P.S. A recording of the Arctic Report Card press conference is now available:

A variety of cryospheric posters are available via:

https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm16/meetingapp.cgi/Index/EPoster~1/Program/1175

Post-Truth Global and Arctic Temperatures

December 11, 2016TemperatureBreitbart, Daily Mail, David Rose, David Whitehouse, El Nino, Extent, Gavin Schmidt, GWPF, James Delingpole, Judith Curry, Met Office, Nigel Lawson, Temperature, Twitter, WMOJim Hunt

“Post-truth” is the the Oxford Dictionaries word of the year for 2016. The definition reads as follows:

post-truth – an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.

and according to Oxford Dictionaries:

The concept of post-truth has been in existence for the past decade, but Oxford Dictionaries has seen a spike in frequency this year in the context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States. It has also become associated with a particular noun, in the phrase post-truth politics.

Post-truth has gone from being a peripheral term to being a mainstay in political commentary, now often being used by major publications without the need for clarification or definition in their headlines.

Our old friend David Rose has been remarkably quiet on the topic of Arctic sea ice recently. Presumably the objective facts from the Arctic are impossible to spin to his satisfaction even for a man of David’s talents? However that didn’t stop him from penning an article for The Mail on Sunday at the end of November on the topic of the recent “record highs in global temperatures“:

Global average temperatures over land have plummeted by more than 1C since the middle of this year – their biggest and steepest fall on record.

The news comes amid mounting evidence that the recent run of world record high temperatures is about to end. The fall, revealed by Nasa satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere, has been caused by the end of El Niño – the warming of surface waters in a vast area of the Pacific west of Central America.

The Mail article helpfully included this one year old video from the World Meteorological Organization, explaining the basics of the El Niño phenomenon:

According to the commentary:

This phenomenon affects weather conditions across the equatorial Pacific, with potential knock on effects in other parts of the world.

We’ll get on to the “potential knock on effects” in the Arctic eventually, but let’s start with a snippet of Mr. Rose’s “post-truth politics”:

Some scientists, including Dr Gavin Schmidt, head of Nasa’s climate division, have claimed that the recent highs were mainly the result of long-term global warming.

Last year, Dr Schmidt said 2015 would have been a record hot year even without El Nino. ‘The reason why this is such a warm record year is because of the long-term underlying trend, the cumulative effect of the long-term warming trend of our Earth,’ he said. This was ‘mainly caused’ by the emission of greenhouse gases by humans.

Other experts have also disputed Dr Schmidt’s claims. Professor Judith Curry, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and president of the Climate Forecast Applications Network, said yesterday: ‘I disagree with Gavin. The record warm years of 2015 and 2016 were primarily caused by the super El Nino.’ The slowdown in warming was, she added, real, and all the evidence suggested that since 1998, the rate of global warming has been much slower than predicted by computer models – about 1C per century.

David Whitehouse, a scientist who works with Lord Lawson’s sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the massive fall in temperatures following the end of El Nino meant the warming hiatus or slowdown may be coming back. ‘According to the satellites, the late 2016 temperatures are returning to the levels they were at after the 1998 El Nino. The data clearly shows El Nino for what it was – a short-term weather event,’ he said.

In case you’re wondering where the politics is in all of this, you need look no further than here:

.@BreitbartNews: Global Temperatures Plunge. Icy Silence from Climate Alarmists https://t.co/uLUPW4o93V

— Sci,Space,&Tech Cmte (@HouseScience) December 1, 2016

The Twitter account of the United States’ House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology quotes a Breitbart article by another old friend of ours, James Delingpole, which quotes David Rose’s article in the Mail on Sunday:

The last three years may eventually come to be seen as the final death rattle of the global warming scare. Thanks [sic] what’s now recognised as an unusually strong El Nino, global temperatures were driven to sufficiently high levels to revive the alarmist narrative – after an unhelpful pause period of nearly 20 years – that the world had got hotter than ever before.

In case you’re also wondering about the objective facts of the matter David Rose quotes with approval “the authoritative Met Office ‘Hadcrut4’ surface record” in his latest article in the Mail on Sunday this very morning:

New official data issued by the Met Office confirms that world average temperatures have plummeted since the middle of the year at a faster and steeper rate than at any time in the recent past.

The huge fall follows a report by this newspaper that temperatures had cooled after a record spike. Our story showed that these record high temperatures were triggered by naturally occurring but freak conditions caused by El Nino – and not, as had been previously suggested, by the cumulative effects of man-made global warming.

The Mail on Sunday’s report was picked up around the world and widely attacked by green propagandists as being ‘cherry-picked’ and based on ‘misinformation’. The report was, in fact, based on Nasa satellite measurements of temperatures in the lower atmosphere over land – which tend to show worldwide changes first, because the sea retains heat for longer.

There were claims – now exploded by the Met Office data shown here – that our report was ‘misleading’ and ‘cherry-picked’.

Yet bizarrely, the fiercest criticism was reserved for claims we never made – that there isn’t a long-term warming trend, mainly caused by human emissions.

This just wasn’t in our report – which presumably, critics hadn’t even read.

We’ve explained all this to David before, yet bizzarely we obviously need to do so again. Here’s the Mail’s version of the latest HADCRUT 4 data from the Met Office:

and here’s ours:

Can you spot any “cumulative effects of man-made global warming”?

Messrs Smith, Rose, Delingpole, Whitehouse et al. may well be unaware of the fact that the satellite temperature data they’re so fond of cherry picking doesn’t include data from the lower troposphere between 80 degrees North and the North Pole. Just in case they fancy spinning the latest objective facts from the Arctic in the near future, here’s the long term autumnal temperature trend:

and here’s the long term November Arctic sea ice extent trend:

Summer 2016 Surface Melt Takes Off

June 4, 2016MeltBeaufort Sea, CAB, Chukchi Sea, DMI, ESS, ITP, JAXA, Laptev Sea, Melt, NOAA, Northwind Ridge, O-Buoy, TemperatureJim Hunt

June has arrived, and according to the Great White Con Arctic sea ice calendar that means the summer surface melting season has started. Once July arrives bottom melt should have started in earnest too, but for now let’s stick to the surface. Here’s the Climate Reanalyzer map of Arctic surface air temperatures at 06:00 UTC this morning:

Green areas are above 0 degrees Celsius, and bear in mind that the melting point of sea ice is at around -1.8 degrees Celsius. The red areas near the East Siberian Sea coast are 25-30 degrees Celsius. Given those sort of temperatures you might well think that some snow and/or ice in that area would be melting, and you would be correct! Here is the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s current map of Arctic surface melting:

The assorted shades of blue/grey show the areas where surface melting is already underway. Whilst this melting is taking place you may possibly read in some quarters of the cryodenialosphere that “There is almost no melting going on in the Arctic“. The authors of such nonsense evidently don’t know their proverbial Arctic arse from their elbow.

Here’s how today’s surface melting in the East Siberian Sea looks from space:

NASA Worldview “false-color” image of the East Siberian Sea on June 4th 2016, derived from the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite

Meanwhile over on the other side of the Arctic, here’s yesterday’s surface melting on “Amundsen’s Route” through the Northwest Passage:

NASA Worldview “false-color” image of the Northwest Passage on June 3rd 2016, derived from the MODIS sensor on the Aqua satellite

By way of further illustration of the fact that Arctic sea ice is and has been melting, here is a graph of the current area of sea ice in the all important central area of the Arctic Basin, courtesy of “Wipneus” at Arctische Pinguin:

The areas included are the Central Arctic Basin, plus the Beaufort, Chukchi, East Siberian and Laptev Seas. The above zero temperatures are forecast to spread across the Central Arctic Basin early next week, whereupon it will be very interesting to discover what happens to the snow around the single ice mass balance buoy currently transmitting near real time data. Here is the current temperature profile for the sea ice underneath IMB buoy 2015F:

The current conditions there are summarised this morning as:

Pos: 82.00 N, 147.45 W
Air Temp: -3.74 C
Air Pres: 1007.42 mb
Snow depth: 21 cm
Ice thickness: 202 cm

Normally by now there would also be a number of webcams beaming back pictures from across the sea ice in the Arctic Basin. However according to NOAA:

Due to funding constraints, it was not possible to deploy new Web Cams in Spring 2016, but deployments in Spring 2017 are planned.

Three of the camera carrying O-Buoys also seem to have failed over the winter, which leaves us with only O-Buoy 14 to reveal the forthcoming melt to us:

O-Buoy 14 is currently colocated with Ice Tethered Profiler 89, the yellow object in the foreground, at 77.49° N, 153.92° W, to the north of the Beaufort Sea. ITP 89 measures the temperature and salinity of the water beneath the sea ice and revealed this the last time it managed to take a measurement, a month or so ago:

If you examine the extreme right hand edge of the charts carefully you will no doubt note that the water underneath the ice has recently become both warmer and saltier.

Watch this space!

[Edit – June 5th 2016]

The latest JAXA/ADS map shows that the area of sea ice undergoing surface melting has increased since yesterday, particularly over the Chukchi Sea:

The recent clouds over the Beaufort Sea cleared yesterday. Here’s a close up view of the open water between the big floes from the Suomi satellite:

For a more distant perspective see our Summer 2016 image archive.

It’s not simply the surface that’s melting either. Here’s the latest “high resolution” AMSR2 sea ice area graph for the Pacific side of the Arctic:

The Great White Con

Putting the Arctic sea ice record straight

Tag Archives: Temperature

Facts About the Arctic in April 2022

Facts About the Arctic in March 2022

Steve Koonin’s Unsettled History of US Temperature

Facts About the Arctic in February 2018

The January 2018 Fram Strait Cyclones

Expensive ENSO Expertise

December 2016 Arctic Report Card

Arctic Sea Ice News from AGU

Post-Truth Global and Arctic Temperatures

Summer 2016 Surface Melt Takes Off