Month: October 2019

Arctic Ice Locks Up NWP Oct. 16

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The animation of Canadian ice charts shows the Northwest Passage filling with ice over the last two weeks, choking off the open water. In the top center, ice grows south in Peel Sound closing access from Resolute.  Meanwhile in the center left ice is pushing down M’Clintock channel and flling in Victoria Strait.  As of yesterday, the two ice masses joined to block the Bellot strait from Fort Ross to the east.

The graph below shows the ice recovery since day 260, the average daily minimum for the year.

The graph shows the tracks converging while remaining below the 12 year average.  Note the average annual minimum is 4.5M km2.  While 2019 was well below that on day 260, just two weeks later 2019 ice extent reached the 4.5M km2 level on day 274.

Background on Northwest Passage September 1, 2019

Background information is reprinted later on.  Above shows the last two weeks of shifting ice concentrations in the NWP choke point, Queen Maud region. Aug. 19 Prince Regent Inlet, top center was plugged, while Peel Sound, top left opened up and allowed passage.  In just a week or so, Prince Regent turned green (<3/10 covered) to blue.  At the same time thick ice dissipated in Franklin Strait, center left, opening the way SW. In just the last few days a tongue of thick ice has formed at the extreme top of Peel Sound, obstructing entrance from the north.

Note on the map right edge the reference to Foxe Basin, a body of open water south of Baffin Island.  The channel connecting into Gulf of Boothia is blocked most years, but was open in 2016, and passable now.  This is an alternate NWP route when Bellot Strait is also open.

This is today’s map of vessels in the NWP.  Cargo ships in green, tugs in cyan, Passenger ships in blue, yachts in purple.  Note that Peel Sound was the preferred route earlier, now ships are using Bellot strait.

Less Artic Ice This year

The CAA region (Canadian Arctic Archipelago) shown above has much less ice this year, along with most of the Arctic ocean.

As the graph shows, MASIE ice extent this year is presently as low as 2012, year of the Great Arctic Cyclone.  SII is showing about 300k km2 more ice, and matching MASIE 2018 and 2007.  All are below the 12 year average at Sept. 1 (day 244).

Background:  The Outlook in 2007

From Sea Ice in Canada’s Arctic: Implications for Cruise Tourism by Stewart et al. December 2007. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Although cruise travel to the Canadian Arctic has grown steadily since 1984, some commentators have suggested that growth in this sector of the tourism industry might accelerate, given the warming effects of climate change that are making formerly remote Canadian Arctic communities more accessible to cruise vessels. Using sea-ice charts from the Canadian Ice Service, we argue that Global Climate Model predictions of an ice-free Arctic as early as 2050-70 may lead to a false sense of optimism regarding the potential exploitation of all Canadian Arctic waters for tourism purposes. This is because climate warming is altering the character and distribution of sea ice, increasing the likelihood of hull-penetrating, high-latitude, multi-year ice that could cause major pitfalls for future navigation in some places in Arctic Canada. These changes may have negative implications for cruise tourism in the Canadian Arctic, and, in particular, for tourist transits through the Northwest Passage and High Arctic regions.

The most direct route through the Northwest Passage is via Viscount Melville Sound into the M’Clure Strait and around the coast of Banks Island. Unfortunately, this route is marred by difficult ice, particularly in the M’Clure Strait and in Viscount Melville Sound, as large quantities of multi-year ice enter this region from the Canadian Basin and through the Queen Elizabeth Islands.

As Figure 5 illustrates, difficult ice became particularly evident, hence problematic, as sea-ice concentration within these regions increased from 1968 to 2005; as well, significant increases in multi-year ice are present off the western coast of Banks Island as well. Howell and Yackel (2004) illustrated that ice conditions within this region during the 1969–2002 navigation seasons exhibited greater severity from 1969 to1979 than from 1991 to 2002. This variability likely is a reflection of the extreme light-ice season present in 1998(Atkinson et al., 2006), from which the region has since recovered. Cruise ships could use the Prince of Wales Strait to avoid the choke points on the western coast of Banks Island, but entry is difficult; indeed, Howell and Yackel (2004) showed virtually no change in ease of navigation from 1969 to 2002.

An alternative, longer route through the Northwest Passage passes through either Peel Sound or the Bellot Strait. The latter route potentially could avoid hazardous multi-year ice in Peel Sound, but its narrow passageway makes it unfeasible for use by larger vessels. Regardless of which route is selected, a choke point remains in the vicinity of the Victoria Strait (Fig. 5). This strait acts as a drain trap for multi-year ice that has entered the M’Clintock Channel region and gradually advances south-ward (Howell and Yackel, 2004; Howell et al., 2006). While Howell and Yackel (2004) showed slightly safer navigation conditions from 1991 to 2002 compared to 1969 to 1990, they attributed this improvement to the anomalous warm year of 1998 that removed most of the multi-year ice in the region. From 2000 to 2005, when conditions began to recover from the 1998 warming, atmospheric forcing was insufficient to break up the multi-year ice that entered the M’Clintock Channel. Instead the ice became mobile, flowing southward into the Victoria Strait as the surrounding first-year ice broke up earlier (Howell et al., 2006).

During the past 20 years, cruises gradually have become an important element of Canadian Arctic tourism, and currently there seems to be consensus about the cruise industry’s inevitable growth, especially in the vicinity of Baffin Bay. However, we have stressed the likelihood that sea-ice hazards will continue to exist and will present ongoing navigational challenges to tour operators, particularly those operating in the western regions of the Canadian Arctic.

Fast Forward to Summer of 2018:  Northwest Passage Proved Impassable

August 23, 2018 . At least 22 vessels are affected and several have turned back to Greenland.

Reprinted from post on September 3, 2018:  News today from the Northwest Passage blog that S/V CRYSTAL has given up after hanging around Fort Ross hoping for a storm or melting to break the ice barrier blocking their way west.
20180902-1025_crystal

As the vessel tracker shows, they have been forced to Plan C, which is returning to Greenland and accept that the NW Passage is closed this year. The latest ice chart gave them no hope for getting through.  Note yachts can sail through green (3/10), so the hope is for red to yellow to green.  But that did not happen last year.
20180902180000_wis38ct_0010210949

The image below shows the ice with which they were coping.
DCIM100GOPROGOPR5778.

More details at NW Passage blog 20180902 S/V CRYSTAL and S/V ATKA give up and retreat back to Greenland – Score ICE 3 vs YACHTS 0

 

Climate Doomsday Films Debunked

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Debunking The Top 5 Environmental Disaster Films by Julianne Geiger at Oil Price.com Excerpts below in italics with my bolds.

It’s 1983, and the height of the Cold War. The more thoughtful Gen-Xers were contemplating the chances of surviving a nuclear war in a leaky cellar, wondering if the actor-turned-president really knew what he was doing.

They weren’t thinking about whether they had to choose between a world with oil and gas or no world at all due to climate change. There was little polarization.

Climate change seemed far away, indeed. Nuclear war was the clear and present bogeyman.

It was difficult to roller skate with any enthusiasm after watching ABC’s TV movie The Day After.

As far as movies go, the nuclear-war-based film definitely wasn’t an Oscar-winner, but it did manage to horrify an entire generation.

The conclusion of nearly everyone after watching this film: That’s it. We’re screwed. And the most horrifying aspect of apocalypse-by-nuclear war is that we can’t blame it on anyone but ourselves. Alien apocalypse movies are so much easier to take.

Since then, given our addiction to anything apocalyptic, a long line-up of environmental disaster films to feed our self-fulfilling prophecies of destruction have made their way through the box office.

While The Day After back in 1983 was, by all accounts, a realistic portrayal of our pending doom, many others that have followed have been about as realistic as an alien invasion.

It’s difficult, after all, to stuff catastrophic climate change into a couple of hours.

Let us debunk some of the best ones for you in the increasingly popular ‘Cli-Fi’ genre:

#1 The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

Attempting to leech off the wildly dark popularity of the 1983 doom-and-gloom, The Day After Tomorrow (2004) managed to take home the second-place trophy in an IMDB poll for favorite ‘Cli-Fi’ movie of all time (which we don’t understand).

And that is despite being simultaneously recognized as a work of highly implausible global warming fiction. It doesn’t matter: movie-goers crave catastrophes galore, and this film has a new one every minute.

But it has also been ripped apart by the scientific community–including many climate scientists–for violating nearly every law of thermodynamics.

It’s always one man against the world in movies like this. In this case, it’s a paleoclimatologist who uncovers a climate shift in ice core samples. Predictably, he is ignored and a superstorm plunges the world into catastrophic disaster upon disaster. In other words, the whole premise of the movie is that an ice age is upon us–suddenly.

To add to the hero aspect, the paleoclimatologist must travel across the US–by foot–to save his son, braving the superstorms.

Prior to the movie’s release, scientists worried the plot was so extreme it would lead people to dismiss global warming as a complete fantasy. In all likelihood, the film succeeded in sucking some legitimacy out of the climate crusade.

Wacky science will do that, and in this case, our favorite implausibility is the entire premise of the movie which suggests that a network of massive hurricane-shaped snowstorms covering entire continents deposits enough snow to reflect sunlight and create an ice age within a matter of days. This is a development that the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) debunks categorically. While temperatures in parts of the world could drop, it wouldn’t create an ice age in a matter of days. Of course, the movie only has an hour and a half to lay out the earth’s demise.

– Temperatures that dropped suddenly at a rate of 10 degrees per second; or 600 degrees per minute (satellite readings themselves take even longer than this)

– Helicopters crashing to the ground because their fuel froze at -150 degrees F (the tropopause, the coldest part of the troposphere, never reaches this temperature)

– People freezing in place so quickly they don’t have time to exit their vehicles.

#2 Interstellar (2014)

Interstellar is definitely one of the better cli-fi movies ever made, and the science is particularly … sciencey.

Some of the science portrayed in the movie was spot on, according to scientists themselves, but some was … theoretical, at best.

The movie starts with a grim picture of an earth no longer able to sustain the growing of crops due to “The Blight”. With the world about to run out of food and humanity on the brink, a few brave souls travel to the outermost reaches of space to find a more suitable home for mankind.

The movie covers the science of a microorganism called the blight–a scenario that is particularly unlikely given that it would span across multiple types of crops, which are all genetically dissimilar.

The film also covers space-time warps (true), slingshotting around a neutron star (unlikely), and beings that can live in five dimensions in the bulk (false).

Despite some artistic liberties, it’s entertainment value is top-notch. Just don’t go rushing home to stock up on grains to prepare for a blight-induced famine. It’s just not going to happen.

#3 San Andreas (2015)

San Andreas wasn’t a work of Hollywood genius, but it has the requisite story of earth’s destruction, and a Hollywood hero played by The Rock. The film may be a fun two hours, but it seems the science behind the movie is a bit suspect.

In San Andreas, the world is rocked by the largest earthquake ever, triggered by the San Andreas fault.

There are so many scientific impossibilities that we’re not even sure where to begin. First, science does not exist to predict earthquakes in the manner shown. There is just no way to predict when and where an earthquake will happen. Second, the San Andreas fault is a land-based fault, and those don’t create tsunamis, let alone the major one shown in the movie. Despite the large earthquake in the film, new buildings are designed–particularly in California–to withstand large quakes.

The San Andreas fault is 800 miles long and 10 or so miles long. Because the magnitude of the earthquake is dependent on the area of the fault, anything more than an 8.3 is unlikely.

And that gaping hole in the ground left by the quake? Utter nonsense. While small crevasses may occur from landslides and such, the ground does not split apart, exposing the major chasm like the one shown in the movie.

#4 Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Can the world really run out of water? Will water someday be the new oil?

NASA’s chief water expert, Jay Famigletti, says it absolutely can, adding that California may actually see such a scenario if its drought continues.

In Mad Max: Fury Road, which is set decades after the original Mad Max, water is definitely the new oil, and drilling for it is a horrifyingly violent business.

In the Max Max world, only people with the means to pump water from deep within the earth have any access at all. Those with lesser means are left scrambling for the most precious commodity.

Toxic dust storms and other perils depicted in the movie are possibly exaggerated, but some scientists were quick to jump on the movie’s message, saying that this is the world we may be living in if we fail to work at curbing climate change.

“Our climate models certainly predict increasing ‘desertification’,” Farnigletti said of the film, adding that there were “metaphorical elements of ‘Mad Max’ that are already happening, and that will only worsen with time.”

Farnigletti was careful to add that some conditions in the movie were exaggerated.

#5 Sunshine (2007)

The year is 2057, and Earth’s sun is dying, threatening to end humanity along with it. The planet’s only hope is an internationally diverse group of eight men and women who are brave enough to venture into space with a nuclear fission bomb that is supposed to revive the sun.

The premise is that the sun is being eaten alive from the inside out by a supersymmetric particle called a Q-Ball. It’s based on a theory by Harvard physicist Sidney Coleman, who posited that the Q-Ball may have formed during the Big Bang and potentially had the ability to break down ordinary matter made of protons and neutrons.

We’re not physicists, nor will we attempt to be, but the movie’s theory that the Q-Ball is eating away at the sun like a cancer is debunked by pretty much every scientist out there, not least because the Q-Ball theory itself has never been proven. Scientists from New York University studying the Q-Ball theory say that the biggest problem with the movie is that, if it existed, a Q-Ball would actually have the opposite effect on the sun: It would not die; rather, it’s radiation would vastly increase and we wouldn’t freeze–we’d all fry.

Footnote:  I’m sorry the list excluded my favorite:

That one inspired reflections on the fact our planet is misnamed “Earth”  when it is so obviously “Ocean.”  See Climate Report from the Water World

Coming soon to your neighborhood: Watch for it!

SSTs Cooling in September

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:

  • The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
  • SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
  • A major El Nino was the dominant climate feature in recent years.

HadSST is generally regarded as the best of the global SST data sets, and so the temperature story here comes from that source, the latest version being HadSST3.  More on what distinguishes HadSST3 from other SST products at the end.

The Current Context

The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST3 starting in 2015 through September 2019.
A global cooling pattern is seen clearly in the Tropics since its peak in 2016, joined by NH and SH cycling downward since 2016.  In 2019 all regions had been converging to reach nearly the same value in April.

Then  NH rose exceptionally by almost 0.5C in the previous three months, exceeding previous summer peaks in NH since 2015.  Now that warm NH pulse has started to reverse.  Meanwhile the SH continues to cool sharply, and the Tropics are cooling gradually.  Despite the sharp jump in NH, the global anomaly dropped in September by almost 0.1C

Note that higher temps in 2015 and 2016 were first of all due to a sharp rise in Tropical SST, beginning in March 2015, peaking in January 2016, and steadily declining back below its beginning level. Secondly, the Northern Hemisphere added three bumps on the shoulders of Tropical warming, with peaks in August of each year.  A fourth NH bump was lower and peaked in September 2018.  As noted above, July 2019 is matching the first of these upward bumps.

And as before, note that the global release of heat was not dramatic, due to the Southern Hemisphere offsetting the Northern one.  The major difference between now and 2015-2016 is the absence of Tropical warming driving the SSTs.

The annual SSTs for the last five years are as follows:

Annual SSTs Global NH SH  Tropics
2014 0.477 0.617 0.335 0.451
2015 0.592 0.737 0.425 0.717
2016 0.613 0.746 0.486 0.708
2017 0.505 0.650 0.385 0.424
2018 0.480 0.620 0.362 0.369

2018 annual average SSTs across the regions are close to 2014, slightly higher in SH and much lower in the Tropics.  The SST rise from the global ocean was remarkable, peaking in 2016, higher than 2011 by 0.32C.

A longer view of SSTs

The graph below  is noisy, but the density is needed to see the seasonal patterns in the oceanic fluctuations.  Previous posts focused on the rise and fall of the last El Nino starting in 2015.  This post adds a longer view, encompassing the significant 1998 El Nino and since.  The color schemes are retained for Global, Tropics, NH and SH anomalies.  Despite the longer time frame, I have kept the monthly data (rather than yearly averages) because of interesting shifts between January and July.

Open image in new tab to enlarge.

1995 is a reasonable starting point prior to the first El Nino.  The sharp Tropical rise peaking in 1998 is dominant in the record, starting Jan. ’97 to pull up SSTs uniformly before returning to the same level Jan. ’99.  For the next 2 years, the Tropics stayed down, and the world’s oceans held steady around 0.2C above 1961 to 1990 average.

Then comes a steady rise over two years to a lesser peak Jan. 2003, but again uniformly pulling all oceans up around 0.4C.  Something changes at this point, with more hemispheric divergence than before. Over the 4 years until Jan 2007, the Tropics go through ups and downs, NH a series of ups and SH mostly downs.  As a result the Global average fluctuates around that same 0.4C, which also turns out to be the average for the entire record since 1995.

2007 stands out with a sharp drop in temperatures so that Jan.08 matches the low in Jan. ’99, but starting from a lower high. The oceans all decline as well, until temps build peaking in 2010.

Now again a different pattern appears.  The Tropics cool sharply to Jan 11, then rise steadily for 4 years to Jan 15, at which point the most recent major El Nino takes off.  But this time in contrast to ’97-’99, the Northern Hemisphere produces peaks every summer pulling up the Global average.  In fact, these NH peaks appear every July starting in 2003, growing stronger to produce 3 massive highs in 2014, 15 and 16.  NH July 2017 was only slightly lower, and a fifth NH peak still lower in Sept. 2018.  Note also that starting in 2014 SH plays a moderating role, offsetting the NH warming pulses. (Note: these are high anomalies on top of the highest absolute temps in the NH.)

What to make of all this? The patterns suggest that in addition to El Ninos in the Pacific driving the Tropic SSTs, something else is going on in the NH.  The obvious culprit is the North Atlantic, since I have seen this sort of pulsing before.  After reading some papers by David Dilley, I confirmed his observation of Atlantic pulses into the Arctic every 8 to 10 years.

But the peaks coming nearly every summer in HadSST require a different picture.  Let’s look at August, the hottest month in the North Atlantic from the Kaplan dataset.
The AMO Index is from from Kaplan SST v2, the unaltered and not detrended dataset. By definition, the data are monthly average SSTs interpolated to a 5×5 grid over the North Atlantic basically 0 to 70N. The graph shows warming began after 1992 up to 1998, with a series of matching years since. Because the N. Atlantic has partnered with the Pacific ENSO recently, let’s take a closer look at some AMO years in the last 2 decades.
This graph shows monthly AMO temps for some important years. The Peak years were 1998, 2010 and 2016, with the latter emphasized as the most recent. The other years show lesser warming, with 2007 emphasized as the coolest in the last 20 years. Note the red 2018 line is at the bottom of all these tracks. The short black line shows that 2019 began slightly cooler, then tracked 2018, then rose to match previous summer pulses, before dropping down in September.

Summary

The oceans are driving the warming this century.  SSTs took a step up with the 1998 El Nino and have stayed there with help from the North Atlantic, and more recently the Pacific northern “Blob.”  The ocean surfaces are releasing a lot of energy, warming the air, but eventually will have a cooling effect.  The decline after 1937 was rapid by comparison, so one wonders: How long can the oceans keep this up? If the pattern of recent years continues, NH SST anomalies may rise slightly in coming months, but once again, ENSO which has weakened will probably determine the outcome.

Footnote: Why Rely on HadSST3

HadSST3 is distinguished from other SST products because HadCRU (Hadley Climatic Research Unit) does not engage in SST interpolation, i.e. infilling estimated anomalies into grid cells lacking sufficient sampling in a given month. From reading the documentation and from queries to Met Office, this is their procedure.

HadSST3 imports data from gridcells containing ocean, excluding land cells. From past records, they have calculated daily and monthly average readings for each grid cell for the period 1961 to 1990. Those temperatures form the baseline from which anomalies are calculated.

In a given month, each gridcell with sufficient sampling is averaged for the month and then the baseline value for that cell and that month is subtracted, resulting in the monthly anomaly for that cell. All cells with monthly anomalies are averaged to produce global, hemispheric and tropical anomalies for the month, based on the cells in those locations. For example, Tropics averages include ocean grid cells lying between latitudes 20N and 20S.

Gridcells lacking sufficient sampling that month are left out of the averaging, and the uncertainty from such missing data is estimated. IMO that is more reasonable than inventing data to infill. And it seems that the Global Drifter Array displayed in the top image is providing more uniform coverage of the oceans than in the past.

uss-pearl-harbor-deploys-global-drifter-buoys-in-pacific-ocean

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

Polar Bear Pelt Product Review

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Having sold our house, we have moved into an apartment.  In the course of settling in, we came across these wonderful polar bear pelts to serve as throws upon our new recliner sofa.  They are soft, warm and go along with our color scheme.  And I can confirm that petroleum age polar bear pelts made of 100% polyester are superior to natural ones in all respects.

 

 

Activists Push Climate Snake Oil

Posted on by Ron Clutz

From the “Don’t just stand there, Do Something” file, a recent article points out tonics on offer from climatists. Not only are their prescriptions useless against the supposed problem, worse they do actual harm in and of themselves. Bjorn Lomborg writes at New York Post Climate change activists are focused on all the wrong solutions. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

As it is becoming obvious that political responses to global warming such as the Paris treaty are not working, environmentalists are urging us to consider the climate impact of our personal actions. Don’t eat meat, don’t drive a gasoline-powered car and don’t fly, they say. But these individual actions won’t make a substantial difference to our planet, and such demands divert attention away from the solutions that are needed.

Even if all 4.5 billion flights this year were stopped from taking off, and the same happened every year until 2100, temperatures would be reduced by just 0.054 degrees, using mainstream climate models — equivalent to delaying climate change by less than one year by 2100.

Nor will we solve global warming by giving up meat. Going vegetarian is difficult — one US survey shows 84 percent fail, most in less than a year. Those who succeed will only reduce their personal emissions by about 2 percent.

And electric cars are not the answer. Globally, there are just 5 million fully electric cars on the road. Even if this climbs massively to 130 million in 11 years, the International Energy Agency finds CO₂ equivalent emissions would be reduced by a mere 0.4 percent globally.

Put simply: The solution to climate change cannot be found in personal changes in the homes of the middle classes of rich countries.

The Paris treaty cannot do much — just like the Rio and Kyoto pacts mostly failed before it — because this approach requires rich countries to promise future economic hardship to achieve very little.

The real reason for this: Most of the 21st century emissions are not being emitted by the rich world. Indeed, if every single rich country stopped all CO₂ emissions today and for the rest of the century — no plane trips, no meat consumption, no gasoline-powered cars, no heating or cooling with fossil fuels, no artificial fertilizer — the difference would be just 0.72 degrees°F by end-of-century.

Solving climate change, in fact, requires getting China, India and all the other developing countries on board to cut emissions. But of course, their goal is to lift their populations out of poverty with cheap and reliable energy. How do we square that?

A carbon tax can play a limited but important role in factoring the costs of climate change into fossil-fuel use. Nobel laureate climate economist William Nordhaus has shown that implementing a small but rising global carbon tax will realistically cut some of the most damaging climate impacts at rather low costs.

This, however, will not solve most of the climate challenge. We must look at how we solved past major challenges — through innovation. The starvation catastrophes in developing nations in the 1960s to ’80s weren’t fixed by asking people to consume less food but through the Green Revolution in which innovation developed higher-yielding varieties that produced more plentiful food.

Similarly, the climate challenge will not be solved by asking people to use less (and more expensive) green energy. Instead, we should dramatically ramp up spending on research and development into green energy.

The Copenhagen Consensus Center asked 27 of the world’s top climate economists to examine policy options for responding to climate change. This analysis showed that the best investment is in green-energy R&D. For every dollar spent, $11 of climate damages would be avoided.

This would bring forward the day when green-energy alternatives are cheaper and more attractive than fossil fuels not just for the elite but for the entire world.

Right now, despite all the rhetoric about the importance of global warming, we are not ramping up this spending. On the sidelines of the 2015 Paris climate summit, more than 20 world leaders made a promise to double green-energy research and development by 2020. But spending has only inched up from $16 billion in 2015 to $17 billion in 2018. This is a broken promise that matters.

After 30 years of pursuing the wrong solution to climate change, we need to change the script.

Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School.

N. Atlantic Cooling Sept. 2019

Posted on by Ron Clutz

RAPID Array measuring North Atlantic SSTs.

For the last few years, observers have been speculating about when the North Atlantic will start the next phase shift from warm to cold. Given the way 2018 went and 2019 is following, this may be the onset.  First some background.

. Source: Energy and Education Canada

An example is this report in May 2015 The Atlantic is entering a cool phase that will change the world’s weather by Gerald McCarthy and Evan Haigh of the RAPID Atlantic monitoring project. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

This is known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), and the transition between its positive and negative phases can be very rapid. For example, Atlantic temperatures declined by 0.1ºC per decade from the 1940s to the 1970s. By comparison, global surface warming is estimated at 0.5ºC per century – a rate twice as slow.

In many parts of the world, the AMO has been linked with decade-long temperature and rainfall trends. Certainly – and perhaps obviously – the mean temperature of islands downwind of the Atlantic such as Britain and Ireland show almost exactly the same temperature fluctuations as the AMO.

Atlantic oscillations are associated with the frequency of hurricanes and droughts. When the AMO is in the warm phase, there are more hurricanes in the Atlantic and droughts in the US Midwest tend to be more frequent and prolonged. In the Pacific Northwest, a positive AMO leads to more rainfall.

A negative AMO (cooler ocean) is associated with reduced rainfall in the vulnerable Sahel region of Africa. The prolonged negative AMO was associated with the infamous Ethiopian famine in the mid-1980s. In the UK it tends to mean reduced summer rainfall – the mythical “barbeque summer”.Our results show that ocean circulation responds to the first mode of Atlantic atmospheric forcing, the North Atlantic Oscillation, through circulation changes between the subtropical and subpolar gyres – the intergyre region. This a major influence on the wind patterns and the heat transferred between the atmosphere and ocean.

The observations that we do have of the Atlantic overturning circulation over the past ten years show that it is declining. As a result, we expect the AMO is moving to a negative (colder surface waters) phase. This is consistent with observations of temperature in the North Atlantic.

Cold “blobs” in North Atlantic have been reported, but they are usually winter phenomena. For example in April 2016, the sst anomalies looked like this

But by September, the picture changed to this

And we know from Kaplan AMO dataset, that 2016 summer SSTs were right up there with 1998 and 2010 as the highest recorded.

As the graph above suggests, this body of water is also important for tropical cyclones, since warmer water provides more energy.  But those are annual averages, and I am interested in the summer pulses of warm water into the Arctic. As I have noted in my monthly HadSST3 reports, most summers since 2003 there have been warm pulses in the north atlantic.


The AMO Index is from from Kaplan SST v2, the unaltered and not detrended dataset. By definition, the data are monthly average SSTs interpolated to a 5×5 grid over the North Atlantic basically 0 to 70N.  The graph shows the warmest month August beginning to rise after 1993 up to 1998, with a series of matching years since.  December 2016 set a record at 20.6C, but note the plunge down to 20.2C for  December 2018, matching 2011 as the coldest years  since 2000.
September 2019 shows the summer pulse weakening, higher than 2018 but well below other recent peak years since 2013.  Because McCarthy refers to hints of cooling to come in the N. Atlantic, let’s take a closer look at some AMO years in the last 2 decades.

This graph shows monthly AMO temps for some important years. The Peak years were 1998, 2010 and 2016, with the latter emphasized as the most recent. The other years show lesser warming, with 2007 emphasized as the coolest in the last 20 years. Note the red 2018 line was at the bottom of all these tracks.  The short black line shows that 2019 began slightly cooler than January 2018, then tracked closely before rising in the summer months, though still lower than the peak years. Now in September 2019 is dropping closer to cooler years.

amo annual122018

NWP Icing Update 2019 Oct. 05

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The animation shows ice rebuilding in the Northwest Passage over the last two weeks, doubling the extent and choking off the open water.  In the center, ice grows eastward in Barrow Strait closing access to Resolute, and shutting the northern entrance to Peel Sound.  Meanwhile in the center bottom ice is pushing down M’Clintock channel and flling in Victoria Strait.  There is still some open water for yachts to pass. but the direct routes are closing fast.

The current Canadian ice chart shows Peel Sound blocked at the top and Victoria Strait lower down.  The open passage goes around King William island. to reach Cambridge Bay in the west.  The graph below shows the ice recovery since day 260, the average daily minimum for the year.

Background on Northwest Passage September 1, 2019

Background information is reprinted later on.  Above shows the last two weeks of shifting ice concentrations in the NWP choke point, Queen Maud region. Aug. 19 Prince Regent Inlet, top center was plugged, while Peel Sound, top left opened up and allowed passage.  In just a week or so, Prince Regent turned green (<3/10 covered) to blue.  At the same time thick ice dissipated in Franklin Strait, center left, opening the way SW. In just the last few days a tongue of thick ice has formed at the extreme top of Peel Sound, obstructing entrance from the north.

Note on the map right edge the reference to Foxe Basin, a body of open water south of Baffin Island.  The channel connecting into Gulf of Boothia is blocked most years, but was open in 2016, and passable now.  This is an alternate NWP route when Bellot Strait is also open.

This is today’s map of vessels in the NWP.  Cargo ships in green, tugs in cyan, Passenger ships in blue, yachts in purple.  Note that Peel Sound was the preferred route earlier, now ships are using Bellot strait.

Less Artic Ice This year

The CAA region (Canadian Arctic Archipelago) shown above has much less ice this year, along with most of the Arctic ocean.

As the graph shows, MASIE ice extent this year is presently as low as 2012, year of the Great Arctic Cyclone.  SII is showing about 300k km2 more ice, and matching MASIE 2018 and 2007.  All are below the 12 year average at Sept. 1 (day 244).  The table below provides the numbers by regions.

Region 2019244 Day 244 Average 2019-Ave. 2018244 2019-2018
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 4113725 4857617 -743892 4514946 -401222
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 362877 531979 -169101 529700 -166823
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 139335 219474 -80139 178633 -39299
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 96512 356347 -259835 475647 -379135
 (4) Laptev_Sea 102556 172240 -69684 21366 81190
 (5) Kara_Sea 2479 40884 -38405 235 2244
 (6) Barents_Sea 23037 21055 1981 0 23037
 (7) Greenland_Sea 127514 171819 -44304 79706 47808
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 10485 27726 -17241 28385 -17900
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 238187 307540 -69353 364406 -126219
 (10) Hudson_Bay 0 21905 -21905 23268 -23268
 (11) Central_Arctic 3010000 2985788 24211 2813056 196944

The NH ice extent is 744k km2 or 15% below average.  Most of the deficit is in the first four regions, BCE and Laptev.  CAA is almost 70k km2 or 23% below its average.  Other regions have smaller deficits and Central Arctic is in slight surplus.

Background:  The Outlook in 2007

From Sea Ice in Canada’s Arctic: Implications for Cruise Tourism by Stewart et al. December 2007. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Although cruise travel to the Canadian Arctic has grown steadily since 1984, some commentators have suggested that growth in this sector of the tourism industry might accelerate, given the warming effects of climate change that are making formerly remote Canadian Arctic communities more accessible to cruise vessels. Using sea-ice charts from the Canadian Ice Service, we argue that Global Climate Model predictions of an ice-free Arctic as early as 2050-70 may lead to a false sense of optimism regarding the potential exploitation of all Canadian Arctic waters for tourism purposes. This is because climate warming is altering the character and distribution of sea ice, increasing the likelihood of hull-penetrating, high-latitude, multi-year ice that could cause major pitfalls for future navigation in some places in Arctic Canada. These changes may have negative implications for cruise tourism in the Canadian Arctic, and, in particular, for tourist transits through the Northwest Passage and High Arctic regions.

The most direct route through the Northwest Passage is via Viscount Melville Sound into the M’Clure Strait and around the coast of Banks Island. Unfortunately, this route is marred by difficult ice, particularly in the M’Clure Strait and in Viscount Melville Sound, as large quantities of multi-year ice enter this region from the Canadian Basin and through the Queen Elizabeth Islands.

As Figure 5 illustrates, difficult ice became particularly evident, hence problematic, as sea-ice concentration within these regions increased from 1968 to 2005; as well, significant increases in multi-year ice are present off the western coast of Banks Island as well. Howell and Yackel (2004) illustrated that ice conditions within this region during the 1969–2002 navigation seasons exhibited greater severity from 1969 to1979 than from 1991 to 2002. This variability likely is a reflection of the extreme light-ice season present in 1998(Atkinson et al., 2006), from which the region has since recovered. Cruise ships could use the Prince of Wales Strait to avoid the choke points on the western coast of Banks Island, but entry is difficult; indeed, Howell and Yackel (2004) showed virtually no change in ease of navigation from 1969 to 2002.

An alternative, longer route through the Northwest Passage passes through either Peel Sound or the Bellot Strait. The latter route potentially could avoid hazardous multi-year ice in Peel Sound, but its narrow passageway makes it unfeasible for use by larger vessels. Regardless of which route is selected, a choke point remains in the vicinity of the Victoria Strait (Fig. 5). This strait acts as a drain trap for multi-year ice that has entered the M’Clintock Channel region and gradually advances south-ward (Howell and Yackel, 2004; Howell et al., 2006). While Howell and Yackel (2004) showed slightly safer navigation conditions from 1991 to 2002 compared to 1969 to 1990, they attributed this improvement to the anomalous warm year of 1998 that removed most of the multi-year ice in the region. From 2000 to 2005, when conditions began to recover from the 1998 warming, atmospheric forcing was insufficient to break up the multi-year ice that entered the M’Clintock Channel. Instead the ice became mobile, flowing southward into the Victoria Strait as the surrounding first-year ice broke up earlier (Howell et al., 2006).

During the past 20 years, cruises gradually have become an important element of Canadian Arctic tourism, and currently there seems to be consensus about the cruise industry’s inevitable growth, especially in the vicinity of Baffin Bay. However, we have stressed the likelihood that sea-ice hazards will continue to exist and will present ongoing navigational challenges to tour operators, particularly those operating in the western regions of the Canadian Arctic.

Fast Forward to Summer of 2018:  Northwest Passage Proved Impassable

August 23, 2018 . At least 22 vessels are affected and several have turned back to Greenland.

Reprinted from post on September 3, 2018:  News today from the Northwest Passage blog that S/V CRYSTAL has given up after hanging around Fort Ross hoping for a storm or melting to break the ice barrier blocking their way west.
20180902-1025_crystal

As the vessel tracker shows, they have been forced to Plan C, which is returning to Greenland and accept that the NW Passage is closed this year. The latest ice chart gave them no hope for getting through.  Note yachts can sail through green (3/10), so the hope is for red to yellow to green.  But that did not happen last year.
20180902180000_wis38ct_0010210949

The image below shows the ice with which they were coping.
DCIM100GOPROGOPR5778.

More details at NW Passage blog 20180902 S/V CRYSTAL and S/V ATKA give up and retreat back to Greenland – Score ICE 3 vs YACHTS 0

 

2019 Arctic Ice Demise Deferred Again

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The graph shows the annual minimum September monthly average sea ice extent in NH from 2007 through 2019 according to two different data sets:  Sea Ice Index (SII) from NOAA and Multisensor Analyzed Sea Ice Extent (MASIE) from NIC.  The chart begins with 2007 ending a decadal decline and beginning 12 years of fluctuations around a plateau.  SII and MASIE give quite similar results for September, with SII slightly higher early on, and also showing more ice this year.  The linear trendlines are flat for both indices with 2019 being similar to 2007.

MASIE daily results for September show 2019 early melting followed by an early stabilizing and refreezing.
Note that 2019 started the month about 800k km2 below the 12 year average (2007 through 2018 inclusive).  There was little additional loss of ice, a rise then a dip below 4 M km2, and a sharp rise ending the month.  Interestingly, 2019 matched the lowest year 2012 at the start, but ended the month well ahead of both 2012 and 2007.

The table for day 273 shows distribution of ice across the regions making up the Arctic ocean.

Region 2019273 Day 273 Average 2019-Ave. 2007273 2019-2007
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 4461290 4964938 -503649 4086883 374407
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 467540 535783 -68243 498743 -31203
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 114218 203936 -89717 51 114167
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 111249 334295 -223046 311 110938
 (4) Laptev_Sea 39689 171917 -132228 235245 -195556
 (5) Kara_Sea 18 27661 -27643 15367 -15349
 (6) Barents_Sea 6488 17303 -10815 4851 1637
 (7) Greenland_Sea 253624 236219 17405 353210 -99587
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 47659 53503 -5844 42247 5412
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 373697 388886 -15189 307135 66562
 (10) Hudson_Bay 0 4471 -4471 1936 -1936
 (11) Central_Arctic 3045966 2989860 56106 2626511 419455

Presently 2019 ice extent according to MASIE is 500k km2 (10%) below the 12 year average and 374k km2 more than 2007. Most of the deficit to average is in East Siberian and Laptev seas, along with the Pacific seas of Beaufort and Chukchi.  Other places are close to normal, with Central Arctic higher than average and much greater than 2007.

The Bigger Picture 

The annual Arctic ice extent minimum typically occurs on or about day 260 (mid September). Some take any year’s slightly lower minimum as proof that Arctic ice is dying, but the image below shows the second week in September over the last 11 years. The Arctic heart is beating clear and strong.

These are weekly ice charts from AARI in St. Petersburg.  The legend says the brown area is 7/10 to 10/10 ice concentration, while green areas are 1/10 to 6/10 ice covered. North American arctic areas are not analyzed in these images.  Note how the distribution of sea ice varies from year to year, and how small was the extent after the 2012 Great Arctic cyclone.

Over this decade, the Arctic ice minimum has not declined, but since 2007 looks like fluctuations around a plateau. By mid-September, all the peripheral seas have turned to water, and the residual ice shows up in a few places. The table below indicates where we can expect to find ice this September. Numbers are area units of Mkm2 (millions of square kilometers).

Day 260 12 year
Arctic Regions 2007 2010 2012 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Average
Central Arctic Sea 2.67 3.16 2.64 2.98 2.93 2.92 3.07 2.91 2.97 2.93
BCE 0.50 1.08 0.31 1.38 0.89 0.52 0.84 1.16 0.46 0.89
LKB 0.29 0.24 0.02 0.19 0.05 0.28 0.26 0.02 0.11 0.16
Greenland & CAA 0.56 0.41 0.41 0.55 0.46 0.45 0.52 0.41 0.36 0.46
B&H Bays 0.03 0.03 0.02 0.02 0.10 0.03 0.07 0.05 0.01 0.04
NH Total 4.05 4.91 3.40 5.13 4.44 4.20 4.76 4.56 3.91 4.48

The table includes three early years of note along with the last 6 years compared to the 12 year average for five contiguous arctic regions. BCE (Beaufort, Chukchi and East Siberian) on the Asian side are quite variable as the largest source of ice other than the Central Arctic itself.   Greenland Sea and CAA (Canadian Arctic Archipelago) together hold almost 0.5M km2 of ice at annual minimum, fairly consistently.   LKB are the European seas of Laptev, Kara and Barents, a smaller source of ice, but a difference maker some years, as Laptev was in 2016.  Baffin and Hudson Bays are inconsequential as of day 260.

For context, note that the average maximum has been 15M, so on average the extent shrinks to 30% of the March high before growing back the following winter.

Climate for Dummies

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Lubos Motl has a fine post explaining the basics of climate science for the mostly uninformed masses. His article at his blog is Worries about extinction in 10-15 years reveal deep scientific illiteracy of the young, urban masses. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

A week ago, Scott Rasmussen published results of a poll. The percentage of the Americans willing to believe claims about the possible imminent extinction of the human race is between 1/2 and 1/3. The most shocking numbers say that 51% of the younger voters under 35 believe it is “somewhat likely for humanity to be wiped out [by anything] in a decade”. Similarly, 45% of urban residents think “humanity may be wiped out by climate change in 10-15 years”.

The stupidity of the underlying assertions is breathtaking and the percentage of the people willing to endorse them is terrifying. And the opposition to the cattle and fossil fuels – our most important source of energy – could be just the beginning. Once the staggering stupidity of the masses becomes normal, you may promote even crazier and more devastating superstitions. There seem to be no limits to the stupidity right now.

Some of the Friday kids in the streets are there simply because any excuse to skip the classes is wonderful news. They don’t really believe that the world may end anytime soon. The truly irresponsible people are the principals and other adults that allow these bastards to avoid the education process, of course.

But many of the people must genuinely believe these comments. And the percentage of such people may be between 10% and 51%, too, at least within some demographics. The lack of critical thinking that is needed for such a conclusion is terrifying and such brain-dead people – who still have the right to vote and other rights, despite their brain death – may be abused not only for the climate panic but for hypothetical policies that are even more devastating.

1. Uniformly distributed CO2 can’t possibly increase the frequency of tornadoes, hurricanes, and other things that depend on the non-uniformities of the temperature, pressure, and other things. All the claims that the CO2 causes local weather events are exactly on par with the medieval superstitions promoted during the medieval witch hunts.

2. So if CO2 causes something, it’s a uniform increase of temperature everywhere. The graphs show that the rate of warming is some 1.5 °C a century. It doesn’t make much sense to argue whether we expect 1 °C or 2 °C in the next century.

3. The climate models aren’t terribly trustworthy or useful for the predictions of the temperature trends. Their uncertainties are too high – and we have observed the temperature for many decades to see that the rate 1.5 °C per century is pretty much visible and somewhat constant according to the graphs.

4. The bulk of the insanity isn’t in whether the 1.5 °C per century is man-made; it’s about the question whether it’s dangerous. What can this 1.5 °C of warming per century do? Well, in the 10-15 years when the doomsday is supposed to occur, we will see some 0.15 °C or 0.20 °C, by the rules of proportionality. Can 0.20 °C of warming cause the extinction of the human race?

5. The weather is changing all the time. Several times a year, the temperature jumps or drops by 20 °C within a day – and that’s 100 times greater change than 0.20 °C. And it normally occurs within a day i.e. much faster – not after a decade. The change of the temperature by 0.20 °C is utterly negligible.

6. Even if you want to just measure this temperature and prove that it has changed in a century, you absolutely need all the following conditions to be met: precise thermometers, precision control over their position, averaging over most of the Earth, averaging over seasons as well as day-night cycles, solid statistical methods to average and to apply corrections.

7. The human race has existed throughout the Pleistocene. This species – like millions of others – survived 100 cycles in which the temperature went up and down by as much as 8 °C. The idea that 2 °C of temperature change means “extinction” is beyond silly. Again, recall that the warmer periods were generally the hospitable ones, not vice versa.

8. The idea that the observed recent warming is enough for extinction in 10-15 years is separated from reality by more than 2 orders of magnitude because it’s self-evident that even 20 °C of warming wouldn’t be enough to make humans extinct. You would really need 200 °C of warming (3 orders of magnitude higher than what we expect) to be sufficiently confident that it becomes hard for millions of people to survive.

There’s no way how climate change could kill many people, let alone all people, even in the next century.