Arctic Sea Ice

Arctic Ice Minimums Compared

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Update Sept. 20, 2015: 2014 and 2015 Minimums Established, 11 days ago in NOAA, 2 days ago in MASIE

In the annual match of the ocean vs. Arctic ice, Mother Nature has blown the whistle. Results are little confusing, since NOAA shows the lowest extent 11 days ago, and MASIE only 2 days ago. Moreover, MASIE dropped a lot of ice in the recent period and is now showing less ice than NOAA.  Usually, MASIE is higher by 2-300k km2.

Still, for the climate record it will be the September average that counts, and the platform is firmed up for that result.

First the daily situation:

 

September 19 day 262 results from MASIE. 2014 loses a lot while 2015 gains a lot of ice extent.

While 2014 lost 46k of ice, 2015 gained 70k recovering well above the previous annual daily ice minimum..

2015 ice extent now trails 2014 by 10.6%, which is about 538k km2 difference. Day 262 is the 2014 daily ice extent minimum. Day 260 was 2015 minimum, according to MASIE.

masie day 262

Comparing 2014 and 2015 at Annual Minimums

Ice Extents Day 2014262 Day 2015260 Ice Extent
Region Ann Min Ann Min km2 Diff.
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 5066134 4442258 -623876
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 655536 484880 -170656
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 235122 187420 -47701
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 455832 219274 -236559
 (4) Laptev_Sea 1212 44701 43489
 (5) Kara_Sea 64255 1778 -62478
 (6) Barents_Sea 132741 18 -132723
 (7) Greenland_Sea 210190 236707 26517
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 18245 57136 38891
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 341623 228074 -113549
 (10) Hudson_Bay 862 47674 46811
 (11) Central_Arctic 2949375 2933456 -15919

The table shows the effects of weather in the western Arctic.  In August 2015 lost 700k km2 more than 2014, a differential that persisted to the minimum.  The reductions occurred in the BCE region and in the near by CAA (Canadian Archipelago).  In addition in the east, Barents melted out early and entirely, and nearby Kara become mostly open water.

Elsewhere, on the Canadian side, Hudson and Baffin Bay along with the Greenland Sea had more ice, and the Central Arctic was nearly the same as in 2014.

2015 Recap:

The first 19 days of September 2015 is in the books, so here is an outlook on the melt season conclusion beyond the daily minimums.

For most of the season, 2015 Arctic sea ice extent was tracking 2014. In fact the July average extent was slightly higher than 2014. Then weather intervened in the last week of August. A large and strong cyclone centered over Chukchi Sea began breaking up ice in the BCE Region and affecting CAA (Canadian Archipelago) and the Central Arctic.  In addition, most of the summer the Arctic Oscillation (AO) was in negative phase, meaning fewer clouds, more direct insolation and ice melting.  More discussion of these two factors is at the end of this post.

The effects of this storm are seen in the rapid increase in water extent ( 482k km2 in one week) so that August 31 2015 had less ice than did 2014 at minimum September 19. Water extent continued to grow, and then stabilized once the storm abated and the AO went from negative to neutral.  Now the ice is growing beyond the daily minimum.

Comparing MASIE and NOAA Ice Extents.

Month 2015 2015 2015 2014 2014 2014
Ave. MASIE NOAA MASIE-NOAA MASIE NOAA MASIE-NOAA
Feb 15.032 14.498 0.534
March 15.170 14.758 0.413
April 13.650 13.954 -0.304 14.318 14.088 0.230
May 12.646 12.485 0.161 12.916 12.701 0.215
June 10.841 10.889 -0.049 11.324 11.033 0.292
July 8.713 8.411 0.302 8.482 8.108 0.374
August 5.961 5.658 0.303 6.353 6.078 0.275
Sept 4.545 4.463 0.082 5.364 5.220 0.144
Oct 7.697 7.232 0.464

The table shows July 2015 was above 2014 but late August weather caused a drop in monthly averages.  The August average is now complete and shows ice extent dropped ~2.7M km2 from July, compared to a 2014 loss of ~2.0M. That difference has persisted up to today. NOAA typically reports a lower extent than MASIE, a difference that averaged ~300k km2.  Then in one week MASIE dropped while NOAA plateaued, and now NOAA September extents are quite close to MASIE, some days showing a higher number.

With the September daily ice starting out lower than 2014 the monthly average should end up much smaller.  The September first 19 days average is shown, a figure that should rise and end the month near 4.6M km2. This presumes the minimum has definitely occurred, and the recovery is in effect.

In any case, I am not alarmed over open water in the Arctic. Steadily increasing and above average September ice extents signify the coming of the next ice age, a genuine threat to human life and prosperity.  Fortunately, that is not the indication this year.

Current and Recent Weather in the Arctic

In addition to the storm, the negative AO has been conducive to accelerating ice melting by increased insolation.

September 16 Arctic Oscillation Forecast from AER:

The AO, which has remained almost consistently in negative territory since late June, has resulted in near record low AO values for July and August. The AO is predicted to first trend positive through the weekend and pop into positive territory early next week. However by midweek the AO is predicted to return back into negative territory and remain negative through early October.

“The positive trend in the AO and the setting sun may have brought an early end to the Arctic sea ice melt season but not before sea ice extent achieved its fourth lowest value since observations began.  It is likely that the extremely low AO values observed in July and August are reflective of atmospheric conditions (sunny and warm) that were conducive to rapid sea ice melt.”

https://www.aer.com/science-research/climate-weather/arctic-oscillation

The Alaska Dispatch News reported August 27 on the storm effects at Barrow, Alaska:

“The service has issued a coastal flood warning for Barrow until Friday morning, along with a high surf advisory for the western part of the North Slope and a gale warning for much of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. Seas up to 14 feet were forecast for Thursday in the Chukchi. . .Thursday’s high waves and flooding are products of a large storm that’s being felt as far as Southcentral Alaska, where high winds are forecast, Metzger said. “It’s a pretty big low-pressure system that’s over the Arctic Ocean,” he said. ”

https://www.adn.com/article/20150827/high-winds-causing-big-waves-flooding-barrow

a quarter million square KM of arctic ice in the CAB, adjacent to the Beaufort and Chukchi. 20150829

This storm is reminiscent of the 2012 event that resulted in the lowest ice, greatest water extent this century. The high winds, waves and swells have several effects: Gales push ice floes, opening water between them and pushing them toward warmer waters; Ice pieces are churned and fractured increasing the melt rate; Wave action can flood ice packs or can cause compacting, further reducing extent.

Seeing the Arctic Melt without Warmist Glasses

Posted on by Ron Clutz

In my Arctic Ice Watch reports I have been tracking progress toward September minimum with graphs like these (data from MASIE):

masie day 230

Doing this after a 3-week break, I was struck by the chart looking a lot like the scoring summary of a tight basketball game, only upside down.

Then AndyG55 commented on my recent summary by linking to this chart from Ed Hoskins:

As the above diagram shows, the temperature balance was pretty close for 7000 years, until the cooling accelerated over the last 3000 years.

My light bulb was in seeing that the summer melt is actually the enormous effort by the ocean to recover water trapped as sea ice in the Arctic. The ice extent varies greatly over the centuries and we know from artifacts that it has been both greater and smaller than presently.  In this time of global warming alarmism, some of us watching the melt season find ourselves hoping for the ice to gain extent, simply to take away that basis for claiming the end is nigh.

Let’s be clear. In this contest between the ice and ocean, we humans should be rooting for the ocean, and so would plants and animals if they knew what was going on. None of us want another ice age, so it is a good thing that the ocean has been gaining on the sea ice extent in the last 150 years.

Once again warmists have got it backwards. The Arctic is a canary all right: The more ice there is in September, the closer we are to the next ice age. Open water in the Arctic is a good thing for the ocean and for the planet.

So taking off the warmist glasses, we should be cheering as the water extent grows and the ice retreats. We don’t wish for a record low because that would drive the alarmists into a frenzy.  Anything around 5M km2 for September would signify nothing unusual is happening, so scary things must be found elsewhere.

Maybe the chart should look like this to emphasize the positives of more water, less ice.

Arctic Water Recovery day 230

Conclusion:
I am not so naive to think that this perspective has much chance against the warmist PR juggernaut. Already the lessening of Antarctic sea ice this year is trumpeted as proof of CO2 warming, and not a celebration of fresh water added to the ocean.

The largest ice cap in the Eurasian Arctic – Austfonna in Svalbard – is 150 miles long with a thousand waterfalls in the summer.

But as Erasmus (1466-1536) said:
In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

And this one also applies:

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.
Charles Mackay. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841)

Follow the Water–Arctic Ocean Flywheels

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The motto of oceanography should be: “It’s not that simple.”

Dallas Murphy wrote that in a book containing his reflections from numerous voyages with ocean scientists, entitled Follow the Water: Exploring the Sea to Discover Climate. The author goes on to say:

“One reason why the ocean has been left out of the climate-change discussion is that its internal mechanisms and its interactions with the atmosphere are stunningly complex. That the ocean has been left out has helped pitch the discussion toward unproductive, distracting extremes–either global warming is bunk or sea levels are about to rise twenty feet–and to frame the issue as a matter of opinion, like the place of prayer in public schools.”

He also quotes respected Oceanographer Carl Wunsch: “One of the reasons oceanography has a flavor all it’s own lies in the brute difficulty of observing the Ocean.”

A previous post on the Climate Water Wheel referred to the metaphor of the ocean serving as a thermal flywheel in our planetary climate due to the massive storage of solar energy in bodies of water.  Another post provided some basics on the dynamics of sea ice.

Now, in keeping with the motto above, we shall see that indeed, it is not that simple when we look more closely inside the Arctic Ocean. For example, consider this map from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI):

“Follow the water: Cold, relatively fresh water from the Pacific Ocean enters the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait. It is swept into the Beaufort Gyre and exits into the North Atlantic Ocean through three gateways (Fram, Davis, and Hudson Straits). Warmer, denser waters from the Atlantic penetrate the Arctic Ocean beneath colder water layers, which lie atop the warmer waters and act as a barrier preventing them from melting sea ice.

Once in the Arctic Ocean basin, the water is swept into a mammoth circular current—driven by strong winds—called the Beaufort Gyre (BG). Mighty Siberian and Canadian rivers also drain into the gyre to create a great reservoir of relatively fresh water. Winds trap this water in a clockwise flow, but periodically, the winds shift and the gyre weakens, allowing large volumes of fresh water to leak out. This is “the flywheel,” said WHOI physical oceanographer Andrey Proshutinksy, and when it turns off, fresh water flows toward the North Atlantic.

The water exits the Arctic Ocean via several “gateways.” It can flow through the Fram Strait, between northeast Greenland and Svalbard Island, and then branch around either side of Iceland. It can flow around the west side of Greenland through Baffin Bay and out Davis Strait. It may also flow through a maze of Canadian islands and out Hudson Strait.
These gateways are two-way: They also let in the warmer Atlantic waters that—if not for the halocline—could melt Arctic sea ice.”

http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/is-global-warming-changing-the-arctic

The BG Flywheel System

The research indicates that the complexity can be imagined as a series of flywheels, interacting and combining to moderate the short term effects of weather and changes in circulations of water and winds. Note that this conception shows the ocean flywheel as having four components or layers that operate in their own patterns while being interconnected.

And, as the flywheel system depicts, the ocean components are stratified by both temperature and salinity (saltiness). When sea ice forms, it releases salt into surface waters. These waters become denser and sink to form the Arctic halocline, a layer of cold water that acts as barrier between sea ice and deeper warmer water that could melt the ice. (Illustration by Jayne Doucette, WHOI)

More from WHOI:

Summarizing several hypotheses introduced recently in the publications mentioned above we conclude that the oceanic BG is a major part of the Arctic climate system and is responsible for:

a) Stabilization of the anticyclonic circulation of sea ice and upper ocean layers
b) Accumulation and release of liquid fresh water and sea ice from the BG
c) Ventilation of the ocean in coastal polynyas and openings along shelf-break
d) Regulation of the circulation and fractional redistribution of the summer and winter Pacific waters in the Arctic Ocean
e) Regulation of pathways of the freshwater from the Arctic to the North Atlantic

The sea ice flywheel is an intermediate link between the atmosphere and ocean. Also, sea ice is a product of the atmosphere and ocean interactions. It transfers momentum from the atmosphere to the ocean modifying it depending on sea ice concentration, thickness and its surface and bottom roughness and regulates heat and mass exchange between the atmosphere and ocean. Sea ice flywheel of the system is responsible for:

a) Regulation of momentum and heat transfer between the atmosphere and ocean
b) Accumulation and release of fresh water or salt during melting-freezing cycle
c) Redistribution of fresh water sources through involvement of the first year ice from the marginal seas into the BG circulation and keeping it there for years and transforming it into highly ridged and thick multi-year ice under converging conditions of the BG ice motion.
d) Memorizing of the previous years conditions and slowing down variations in order to avoid abrupt changes
e) Protection of ocean from overcooling or overheating (the latter is extremely important for polar biology)

http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=66596

Conclusion:

Our planet’s climate has changed so little over thousands of years that alarms have been sounded over less than 1 degree celsius of estimated average warming since the Little Ice Age ended 150 years ago. But actually, our Modern Warming period was preceded by the Medieval Warm period, the Roman, and the Minoan Warm periods. Each of them was slightly cooler than the previous, and all of them warmer than now.

If you are looking for explanations why our moderate climate persists over millennia and varies only within a tight range of temperatures, give a thought to the role of the Arctic flywheel system.

Postscript:

Of course, even this is far from the whole story. As the map above shows, there’s lots more than the Beaufort Gyre going on. For example, the Transpolar Current drives flows of ice and water on the European side, in addition to the Beaufort Gyre acting on the North American side.

And despite the emphasis above on the Pacific water, the Atlantic Gulf stream supplies most of the water entering the Arctic.

“The Arctic Ocean is permanently supplied with new water from the Gulf Current, which enters the sea close at the surface near Spitsbergen. This current is called the West Spitsbergen current. The arriving water is relatively warm (6 to 8°C) and salty (35.1 to 35.3%) and has a mean speed of ca. 30 cm/sec-1. The warm Atlantic water represents almost 90% of all water masses the Arctic receives. The other ~10% comes via the Bering Strait or rivers. Due to the fact that the warm Atlantic water reaches usually the edge of the Arctic Ocean at Spitsbergen in open water, the cooling process starts well before entering the Polar Sea.”

Arctic Sea Ice Uncertainties

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The largest ice cap in the Eurasian Arctic – Austfonna in Svalbard – is 150 miles long with a thousand waterfalls in the summer.

About NOAA and MASIE Ice Extent Statistics

As we approach the serious Arctic melting season toward the September minimum, it is important to have a context to interpret various upcoming media reports.

Two factors are paramount: 1) The Sea Ice Prediction Network (SIPN) uses the September Monthly Average as reported by NOAA; and 2) This year NOAA adjusted its measurement system, resulting in a difference in extent statistics.

NOAA says this:

March 2015
The Sea Ice Index processing was updated to use the smaller SSMIS pole hole instead of the SMM/I pole hole, and the erroneous use of the SMMR pole hole in SSM/I and SSMIS data was also corrected. In addition, a new residual weather climatology mask was applied to the Northern Hemisphere that better represents where ice will and will not be, and the extent values in the daily extent data files have been rounded to three decimal places instead of six because that is the precision of the data. The entire time series was reprocessed and now reflects these changes.

http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g02135_seaice_index/#mar-2015

As many are aware, NOAA numbers come entirely from passive microwave sensors on satellites, while MASIE ice charts are prepared by the National Ice Center based on multiple sources, including the microwave results, but also satellite imagery and field reports. More of the difference in methodologies and historical results is described here:
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/comparing-noaa-and-masie-arctic-ice-extent/

Something Different This Year

At the moment we are seeing that NOAA is now reporting ice extent figures that are much closer to MASIE than previously. The following table shows the comparison.

Monthly 2015 2015 2015 2014 2014 2014
Averages MASIE NOAA MASIE-NOAA MASIE NOAA MASIE-NOAA
February 15.032 14.498 0.534
March 15.170 14.758 0.413
April 13.650 13.954 -0.304 14.318 14.088 0.230
May 12.646 12.485 0.161 12.916 12.701 0.215
June 10.841 10.889 -0.049 11.324 11.033 0.292
July 9.573 9.473 0.100 8.482 8.108 0.374
August 6.353 6.078 0.275
September 5.364 5.220 0.144
October 7.697 7.232 0.464

All figures are in M km2. MASIE results stopped last year after October and did not resume until April 2015. The July 2015 average includes only the first 12 days, so it can not be compared to July 2014 30-day average.

Note that last year MASIE showed higher extents in all months, ranging higher by 200-500k km2, except for the September minimum. However, in 2015 NOAA changes show results much closer to MASIE, at times even larger extents. June was almost the same, something that didn’t happen in the past.

Summary

In some charts showing Arctic daily ice extent from several years, NOAA 2015 results exceed 2014 partly because of an adjusted system. The newer numbers are more in synch with MASIE results.

So far 2015 monthly averages are running slightly below last year when comparing MASIE to itself, or NOAA to itself. And SIPN median prediction is for a slightly lower minimum.

However, in the last 2 weeks 2015 is showing higher extent than the same period last year, presently an increase of ~ 500k km2.  Will that trend continue?

What will NOAA show in September? In addition to natural uncertainty, some differences may arise from system changes. At least this time, the adjustments are not in an alarming direction.

NOAA data is here:

ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/north/daily/data/

MASIE Update July 13, 2015

2015 retains 2% lead over 2014 in BCE Region

Some Arctic ice watchers are focused on the BCE region: Beaufort, Chukchi and East Siberian Seas. It seems that when multi-year ice collects in this region, the Arctic Sea ice margin is protected, and the melting is reduced, resulting in a higher September minimum. Thus an early melting in BCE region can signal a lower summer minimum for NH ice extent, and vice-versa.

To monitor this, I have added a BCE index, being the total 2015 ice extent in BCE as a % of total 2014 extent in the same region. All figures from MASIE.

Note that the BCE maximum ice extent is comparable in size to Arctic Sea max. Historically BCE melts much more than the Arctic Sea; for example, in 2014 BCE lost 58% of its max compared to only 10% for Arctic Sea.

BCE Index recent results:

Day BCE 2015 % of 2014
187 2597170 100.2%
188 2594289 99.8%
189 2593287 99.2%
190 2538316 99.1%
191 2540197 100.6%
192 2534781 102.8%
193 2529403 102.6%

Part of the interest in BCE this year comes from the warm water blob in the N. Pacific, that may add melting to this region located on the Asian side. The two years were virtually identical with little melting prior to day 130. Daily losses since then have been similar and the 2 years were tied on day 146. For 3 days 2015 took some losses while 2014 held on to gains. Since day 150 the gap has been ~3-4%, until recently.

The Blob may have melted out Bering Sea early, and that may now be causing Chukchi to have lower extent than last year.  Yet the BCE region had more ice than 2014 for 13 days until slipping behind for 3 days, then recovering to again lead by 2%.

For more on the Blob:  https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/06/13/how-about-that-blob-june-13-update/

July 13, 2015

Day 193, July 12 results from MASIE. Arctic ice extent lead over 2014 dips to 471k km2: A day when 2014 regains ice while 2015 has a small loss. .

2014 gained 58k on this day while 2015 lost 21k, reaching a new seasonal minimum of 9.13M km2. The loss is now 37.2% from NH max on day 93.

2014 extent now trails 2015 by 5.4%, which is about 471k km2 difference.

2015 losses were spread, the largest being 10k in Chukchi.

The seas that have lost ice are: (% lost from each sea’s max)

Baltic 100%
Bering 100%
Okhotsk 99.2%
Barents 87.8%
Baffin Bay 73.7%
Kara 71.1%
Hudson Bay 49.6%
Chukchi 39.2%
Greenland 27.8%
Laptev 19.2%
Beaufort 13.3%
Can Archipelago 12.4%
East Siberian 6.7%

The other seas have lost less than 5% from their maximums.

The seas contributing most to the total NH ice extent loss:

(5) Kara_Sea 12.0%
(6) Barents_Sea 9.6%
(8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._L 23.4%
(10) Hudson_Bay 11.3%
(12) Bering_Sea 12.2%
(14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 11.4%

2015 melt still trails 2014 by 5 days.

masie day 193

Outlook:

At this point, the median outlook for NH ice extent average for September 2015 is about 5M km2, slightly below last year. That seems reasonable to me, given the lower March max, but also considering the higher ice thickness. Of course, there is no predicting what weather events will affect the ice melting and compacting between now and October.

What’s at stake this year? If September average is higher than last year, then it supports the recovery narrative. Slightly lower than 2014 (the consensus prediction) and the generally declining trend is supported. A major fall off in ice extent would be followed by mass media alarm bells.

Spitsbergen Triangle: Ground Zero for Climate Mysteries

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Credit to Dr. Bernaerts for his writings on this subject, excerpts of which appear below.

The Island Nexus for Ocean Currents

From the Dutch: spits – pointed, bergen – mountains

The largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norway. Constituting the westernmost bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea, and the Greenland Sea. Spitsbergen covers an area of 39,044 km2 (15,075 sq mi), making it the largest island in Norway and the 36th-largest in the world.

The fact is that the winter temperatures made a jump of more than eight degrees Celsius at the gate of the Arctic Basin, after 1918. Nowadays, one century later, the event is still regarded as “one of the most puzzling climate anomalies of the 20th century”.

Dr. Bernaerts:

The overriding aspect of the location is the sea; the sea around Spitsbergen, the sea between particularly the Norwegian, the Greenland, and the Barents Seas (Nordic Sea). The Norwegian Sea is a huge, 3000 metres deep basin. This huge water mass stores a great amount of energy, which can transfer warmth into the atmosphere for a long time. In contrast the Barents Sea, in the southeast of Spitsbergen has an average depth of just around 230 metres. In- and outflow are so high that the whole water body is completely renewed in less than 5 years. However, both sea areas are strongly influenced by the water masses coming from the South. The most important element is a separate branch of the North Atlantic Gulf Current, which brings very warm and very salty water into the Norwegian Sea and into the Spitsbergen region. Water temperature and degree of saltiness play a decisive role in the internal dynamics of the sea body. And what might be the role of the huge basin of the Arctic Ocean, 3000 meters depth and a size of about 15 million square kilometers?

The difference towards the other seas mentioned is tremendous. The Arctic Ocean used to be widely ice covered in the first half of the 20th Century, the other seas only partly on a seasonal basis. Only between the open sea and the atmosphere an intensive heat transfer is permanently taking place. Compact sea ice reduces this transfer about 90% and more, broken or floating ice may change the proportion marginally. In this respect an ice covered Arctic Ocean has not an oceanic but ‘continental’ impact on the climate.

The Arctic Ocean is permanently supplied with new water from the Gulf Current, which enters the sea close at the surface near Spitsbergen. This current is called the West Spitsbergen current. The arriving water is relatively warm (6 to 8°C) and salty (35.1 to 35.3%) and has a mean speed of ca. 30 cm/sec-1. The warm Atlantic water represents almost 90% of all water masses the Arctic receives. The other ~10% comes via the Bering Strait or rivers. Due to the fact that the warm Atlantic water reaches usually the edge of the Arctic Ocean at Spitsbergen in open water, the cooling process starts well before entering the Polar Sea.

A further highly significant climate aspect of global dimension is the water masses the Arctic releases back to oceans. Actually, the outflow occurs mainly via the Fram Strait between Northeast Greenland and Spitsbergen, and together with very cold water from the Norwegian Sea basin the deep water spreads below the permanent thermocline into the three oceans.

http://www.arctic-heats-up.com/pdf/chapter_2.pdf

The Spitsbergen Event 1918-1919

Beginning around 1850 the Little Ice Age ended and the climate began warming. Before that, at least since 1650 marked the first climatic minimum after a Medieval warm period, the Little Ice Age brought bitterly cold winters to many parts of the world, most thoroughly documented in the Northern Hemisphere in Europe and North America. The decreased solar activity and the increased volcanic activity are considered as causes. However, the temperature increase was remote and once again effected by the last major volcanic eruption of the Krakatoa in 1883. Up to the 1910s the warming of the world was modest.

Suddenly that changed. In the Arctic the temperatures literally exploded in winter 1918/19. The extraordinary event lasted from 1918 to 1939 is clearly demonstrated in the graph showing the ‘Arctic Annual Mean Temperature Anomalies 1880 – 2004’. But this extraordinary event has a number of facets, which could have been researched and explained. Meanwhile almost a full century has passed, and what do we know about this event today? Very little!

Studies considering the causation of the warming offer sketchy rather than well founded ideas. Here are a few examples:
• Natural variability is the most likely cause (Bengtsson, 2004);
• We theorize that the Arctic warming in the 1920s/1930s was due to natural fluctuations internal to the climate system (Johannessen, 2004).
• The low Arctic temperatures before 1920 had been caused by volcanic aerosol loading and solar radiation, but since 1920 increasing greenhouse gas concentration dominated the temperatures (Overpeck, 1997).
• The earlier warming shows large region-to-region, month-to-month, and year-to-year variability, which suggests that these composite temperature anomalies are due primarily to natural variability in weather systems (Overland, 2004).
• A combination of a global warming signal and fortuitous phasing of intrinsic climate patterns (Overland, 2008).

Arctic Regime Change

These explanations (and others such as CO2 or the AMOC) do not come to grips with how extreme and abrupt was this event. In the Spring of 1917, sea ice reached all the way to Spitsbergen, the only time in a century.

And the next year, temperatures rocketed upward, as shown by the weather station there:

A look at the SST history shows clearly an event as dramatic as a super El Nino causing a regime change. But this is the Atlantic, not the Pacific. Cooling followed, but temperatures stayed at a higher level than before.

Summary

The warming at Spitsbergen is one of the most outstanding climatic events since the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa, in 1883. The dramatic warming at Spitsbergen may hold key aspects for understanding how climate ticks. The following elaboration intends to approach the matter from different angles, but on a straight line of thoughts, namely:

  • WHERE: the warming was caused and sustained by the northern part of the Nordic Sea in the sea area of West Spitsbergen the pass way of the Spitsbergen Current.
  • WHEN: The date of the commencement of warming can be established with high precision of few months, and which was definitely in place by January 1919.
  • WHY: the sudden and significant temperature deviation around the winter of 1918/19 was with considerable probability caused, at least partly, by a devastating naval war which took place around  the British Isles, between 1914 and 1918.

There is much more evidence and analysis supporting Dr. Bernaerts’ conclusions here:

http://climate-ocean.com/arctic-book/index.html


Conclusion:  Unless your theory of climate change can make sense of the Spitsbergen Event, then it cannot inspire confidence. You may not be entirely convinced by Dr. Bernaerts’ explanation, but he at least has one–nobody else  has even tried.