Recently the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Bremerhaven, Germany released a press clipping about polar sea ice, obstinately refusing to acknowledge that there is a trend change happening in the Arctic. It wrote:
The area of sea ice in the Arctic fell to a summer minimum of around 5.0 million square kilometres this year, which is about 1.6 million square kilometres more than the record low in 2012. However, according to sea ice physicist Marcel Nicolaus from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) and Lars Kaleschke from the Hamburg Cluster of Excellence for Climate Research (CliSAP) this confirms the long-term downward trend in the Arctic.”
For what is considered to be a leading institute on the research of polar sciences, it sure seems to have a very poor understanding of the relationship between polar sea ice and other major external factors, such as ocean cycles, e.g. AMO and PDO, and the impacts of other natural cycles.
Note how the scientists seem to naively assume the general trend is linear and downward:
Arctic sea ice extent. The AWI implies the trend will continue downwards. Chart from arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere
To me it is astonishing that sea ice scientists today are taking the linear trend of just a few years data and simply straight-line extending it out decades into the future, something we’d expect to see from a 9-year old primary school pupil. Yet they do point out that weather phenomena led to a particularly large reduction in sea ice the negative-record years of 2007 and 2012.
So just how sure are the scientists about their claims Arctic sea ice is headed downward? Let’s find out.
My bet is simple: I predict that the mean September Arctic sea ice extent for the years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 will be safely above the September mean of the years 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012. This offer is open to the first scientist from any of the following institutes: AWI, PIK, NSIDC, MPI, CRU, NASA, or other alarmist institutes clinging to alarmist scenarios.
My e-mail address, in case you’re naïve enough to believe your models: pierre.gosselin@t-online.de
I’ll bet 1000 USD to go to a charity.
Listening to these scientists, it should be a hands down no-brainer bet. The consensus says the planet is heating. How confident are you really in your science?
Looking like we have a “pause” in Arctic sea ice along with the “pause” in temps. Whodathunk? Maybe the sea ice is hiding somewhere.
The polar bears are the guilty ones here. They are not used to the extremely hot climate up north, and use enormous amounts of ice in their drinks. When you see pictures of them standing on floating pieces of ice and staring into the distance, they are wondering about how much vodka to mix the ice with.
Are you saying that Polar Bears have a drinking problem, I hope not!
No one knows what will happen with Arctic ice.
Except maybe the polar bears.
And they are not talking.
Except of course to the admen from Coca-Cola.
“and Lars Kaleschke from the Hamburg Cluster of Excellence for Climate Research (CliSAP)”
There’s a word starting with cluster that comes to mind. As to “sap”, well urbandictionary has this to say
“sap
A fool; someone who is prone to being taken advantage of, or who has been taken advantage of, usually in a situation that is easily perceived by others as foolhardy. “
Ice extent for this year isn’t the story. The real story is hidden. It’s ice VOLUME which can’t be measured by satellite and, in addition, the average age of the ice left at minimum.
The winds this year compressed a lot of ice against the North American islands of the far north. Very little ice (relatively speaking) was blown out of the Fram or Bering straits. The winds compacted the ice, conserved older ice, and as a result we had ice extent that was in about the middle of the pack for the past 10 years or so.
As this ice goes through yet another brine rejection cycle it becomes fresher and will be more difficult to melt next summer. But it will all depend on the weather. Arctic ice still floats on water and persistent winds in the wrong direction can transport a huge amount of it out of the Arctic into the Atlantic or Pacific or disperse the ice over a wide area within the Arctic which would increase the ice extent numbers but would make for ice that melts easier and is vulnerable to being broken up by storms.
This year’s winds have set the stage for a potential recovery of ice in the coming years such that we have not seen in the satellite era.
Official Institutions which dare to be so out of factual reality (satellite data) are certainly under high political pressure from fed goverment about their future fundings. Unfortunately these scentists prefer prostitute their duty for few money. They should all resign , all.
NH sea ice over the last 10 years:
NSIDC (area)
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/iN_ice_area_2005:2014a.png
NSIDC (extent)
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/iN_ice_extent_2005:2014a.png
HadISST1
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/ihadisst1_ice_0-360E_90-0N_n_2005:2014a.png
NOAA OI.v2
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/iiceoi_v2_0-360E_90-0N_n_2005:2014a.png
Where’s that ‘death spiral’ gone …?
There also seems to be something of a trend reversal in the volume model. Note that this is not actual measurement, it is a model but does use various observational inputs.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.1.png
PIOMAS is yet another failed model. It totally failed to predict the 50% rise in ice volume in 2013.
A model that fails to produce a change that big is worthless in its current state.
They have something hugely and fundamentally wrong in thier understanding of sea ice dynamics. Pop by in tens years time and see whether they have made any progress.
No scientist will be crazy enough to take your bet… lol
crosspatch, your link shows that Arctic ice volume is down 10,000 cubic kilometres from 1980. I find that incredible. In other words unbelievable.
You can say goodbye to those dollars. They will simply make up new definitions of melting and ice extent…..something like “pre-melted ice”; ice which is expected to melt in the coming years will not be counted as part of the ice cover, for instance.
i already have a similar bet with jim hunt who frequents the arctic sea ice forum . he chose ct area as the metric ,and even then i had no trouble in accepting the bet that sea ice minimum will not drop below 1 million square kilometres by 2022.
the are very few warmists that are willing to risk their own money on the outcomes of the “settled science” ,leading me to believe they do not really believe in man made global warming,but do believe that something has to be done,as long as that something does not affect them.
And they’re playing with house money (i.e., ours)!
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Pierre, you are right to highlight the attempts to reframe recovery in sea ice as a continuing ice loss, but not accurate in your comments.
Note the quote : “… this confirms the long-term downward trend in the Arctic.”
You say:
“So just how sure are the scientists about their claims Arctic sea ice is headed downward? ”
“Headed” is past tense. On the limited data we have, upto the present it is “headed” downwards. I do not see where they say they expect this to continue.
If they are saying that, then quote them, it would be unfounded.
The whole problem with climatology in general is that they seem incapable to doing anything more subtle than fitting straight lines to climate variables that have nothing at all linear in thier behaviour.
I have developed an adaptive anomaly that shows more clearly the variation since 2007 than the usual fixed anomaly that has so much residual annual variation it’s hard to see what it’s doing.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/on-identifying-inter-decadal-variation-in-nh-sea-ice/
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=972
I think ice area/extent will be higher again next year and will then drop somewhat in 2016,17 but remaining above 2010-2011 levels.
One thing it is not, is a linear change plus “noise”.
Nothing in climate is linear.
You may want to brush up on your English grammar.
“Arctic sea ice is headed downward” is NOT past tense; it is present. You are confusing the passive voice and its use of the past participle “headed” with the past.
Overall they are claiming an ongoing downward trend, and so it is not unreasonable to infer that they expect this to continue, as otherwise they would have said something about the downward trend having stopped. Clearly they are quite happy about readers believing the trend will continue.
“You may want to brush up on your English grammar.” Haha.
“Arctic sea ice is headed downward” does NOT display the passive voice. If it did, then it could be reconstructed as “X heads Arctic ice downward,” where X is some agent, which is obviously ridiculous given that “head” is not a transitive verb.
“Arctic sea ice is headed downward” alternates with “Arctic sea ice is heading downward.” I am not aware of any other verbs that make such an alternation so easily [awkwardly: c.f. “he is going to school” and “he is gone to school”]; however, this can probably be explained by the inherent hysteresis involved in the act of heading in a direction and changing that heading, which is a consequence of the fact that inertial motion preserves heading.
So, the fact that arctic ice has been exhibiting a downward trend in recent history (taking the epistemological confound of noise into consideration) is sufficient to claim truthfully today that it is “headed downward” even if arctic ice never drops below September 2014 levels ever again.
But on the whole, good post, and I hope someone takes you up on your bet!
Excellent stuff, Pierre. But I doubt any scientist will take your bet. People who mouth off are usually reticent to put their cash there. Shame, because it would shut them up.
Full marks Pierre. Alarmist scientists should put their money where their mouth is or shut up.
Excellently framed bet.