Polar Ice For 2016

Impossible expectations?

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Arctic summers ice-free ‘by 2013’

Gore: Polar ice cap may disappear by summer 2014



The End of the Arctic? Ocean Could be Ice Free by 2015 – The Daily Beast

 

This graph is Arctic Sea Ice .

 

Bookmarked the Polar Ocean Challenge website. It's fun to track the expedition and read the frequency updated blogs and maps. Good luck to them!

 

Agreed and big winds come from big storms.Loss of arctic sea ice is mostly due to wind .Like I said NOT CO2.

 

Loss of arctic sea ice is mostly due to wind@66. As I recall, one time previously you said that loss of sea ice was due to arrival of warm water from lower latitudes.

Anyway I agree with both statements. Or that other local, proximate, immediate factors could be related to ice loss (or ice gain). One has but to look. The problem arises when by force of mental will, any or all of those is declared wholly independent of CO2. It may be possible to demonstrate that (sounds complicated though), but it carries little weight to declare it.

Almost 4 years since I posted Arctic sea ice paleo proxy reconstructions by Kinnard et al. 2011. We may have newer readers here now, so:



For centuries Arctic sea ice extent varied around 10 million km2, but now it is less. Winds and ocean currents may have changed a lot. One thing that has certainly changed a lot is that pesky IR-absorbing gas.

Whether or not CO2 is causative, we do appear to have a different Arctic now, and that's what the thread is about.

 

Tochatihu, it must be said that you have the virtue of much patience.

Much appreciate as well that you and Bob frequent PriusChat to share your data and insights.

 

Very kindly said. Actually what we have here is a world with uncountable variation in things and ways, form and function, pattern and process. Only very recently have humans stepped up to the plate with science toolbox and said 'we can figure this stuff out'. I find that hugely exhilarating. If most in rank and file do not, then only there is my patience, because I fell obliged to get others to get their toes in. Can be fun for you too!

Ultimately my belief is in truth of science as a serviceable toolbox. It produces a lot of crap. Its practitioners include some with less-lofty goals, or agenda driven. Yet all that can be sorted out; refinement and self correction are among the tools. Its detractors include some with less-lofty goals, but I cannot detect what benefits they bring to the table. Champions of what worked well in 19th and 20th centuries? OK, but we had not forgotten that.

That I mostly write here, in this group of Prius friends, can be seen as a lack of self confidence to bring the same messages to a wider audience.

It is my conceit (in the 19th-century definition) that I know youse guys, because Prius. Don't know the broader public. Part of communication is knowing who you are talking to (axiom). When electrical engineers refer to communication as 'impedance matching', it just seems so accurate.

 

Yes, and that's one of the problems with NWP (weather) models - there are some subgrid-scale atmospheric processes the can't be resolved and therefore must be "parameterized". This is a method that uses history of what typically occurs under a given set of atmospheric conditions. While this work-around is usually sufficient, it isn't always, and can introduce significant errors into the model.

 

Ohmigod the space pen myth again?

Fact or Fiction?: NASA Spent Millions to Develop a Pen that Would Write in Space, whereas the Soviet Cosmonauts Used a Pencil - Scientific American

 

Privatization 101.....

"Originally, NASA astronauts, like the Soviet cosmonauts, used pencils, according to NASA historians. In fact, NASA ordered 34 mechanical pencils from Houston's Tycam Engineering Manufacturing, Inc., in 1965. They paid $4,382.50 or $128.89 per pencil. When these prices became public, there was an outcry and NASA scrambled to find something cheaper for the astronauts to use....."

 

Anthrax from thin ice?

The Horrifying Reason Siberia Is Dealing With an Anthrax Outbreak

Let's hope not
.

 

Didn't we ship the blob up there?

 

Blob@76 No that was to very stable Antarctic ice. Um, and imaginary.

 

Most melt outs would be benign. High local concentration of dead critters could be otherwise, so face-mask and washy-washy time

 

Would be nice if we could see the ice in real time as they go through this most challenging leg right now. Things can change so fast there. Looks like about 100 more km north to go at the moment.