Tag Archives: University of Alaska

Chris Martz Should’ve Gone To Specsavers

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Chris Martz, the new kid on the “skeptical block”, proudly proclaimed on XTwitter yesterday that:

There’s more sea ice heading into the summer in the Arctic this year than there was in 1989.

That is of course a porky pie:

As you can see, Chris also invokes the age old canard of the “Mark Serreze Arctic sea ice death spiral”. I discussed that very topic with Mark in 2015:

Mark told me that he still stood by his 2030 estimate for the onset of a seasonally ice free Arctic, although: “Most models say more like 2050”.

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Month in Review – Arctic Science Edition

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Inspired by my recent visits to Judith Curry’s blog this post will bring you links to the latest learned journal articles about Arctic sea ice. Together with occasional excursions into older and wider Arctic papers.

Judith’s “Week in Review” articles seem to last for a month, so this one will probably last for at least a year!

First up is an article apparently written by a regular reader of this humble web site! A University of Alaska article at phys.org begins:

In August 2016 a massive storm on par with a Category 2 hurricane churned in the Arctic Ocean. The cyclone led to the third-lowest sea ice extent ever recorded. But what made the Great Arctic Cyclone of 2016 particularly appealing to scientists was the proximity of the Korean icebreaker Araon.

For the first time ever, scientists were able to see exactly what happens to the ocean and sea ice when a cyclone hits. University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers and their international colleagues recently published a new study showing that sea ice declined 5.7 times faster than normal during the storm. They were also able to prove that the rapid decline was driven by cyclone-triggered processes within the ocean.

Note that it didn’t take us 5 years to write about the cyclone in question. Our article catchily entitled “The Great Arctic Cyclone of 2016” was published on August 13th 2016:

A storm is brewing in the Arctic. A big one! The crew of the yacht Northabout are currently sailing along the western shore of the Laptev Sea and reported earlier today that “The sea is calm. Tomorrow a gale 8. But this moment is perfect”.

That perfect moment will not last long.

I interviewed polar explorer David Hempleman-Adams about the succeeding moments once Northabout had returned to the UK. It seems riding out the cyclone was the most frightening experience he had ever had.

The University of Alaska article references the following peer reviewed paper:

“Role of Intense Arctic Storm in Accelerating Summer Sea Ice Melt: An In Situ Observational Study“

The next on my list of must read papers comes complete with a video:

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