The Arctic Unmelts – Joe Bastardi Shows North Pole Was Unfrozen In The Summer of 1962

Joe Bastardi’s WeatherBELL Analytics presents its latest Saturday Summary.

Arctic_1962

At about the 5:20 mark, Joe shows how a lack of ice at the North Pole in the summertime is really nothing unusual. Above is the North Pole in 1962 in the summertime.

Joe comments, “If this were occurring up there now, everybody would be going out of their minds. […] All the mainstream media and enviro-blogs would go crazy, right?

Then Joe shows how the North Pole looks today:

North Pole June 21 2013

 Of course Arctic sea ice cover reaches it’s low in September and the above picture could change. The point is that an ice-free North Pole would be nothing new.

As Joe explains, Arctic summer sea ice extent is very much dependent on ocean cycles. Once the AMO goes negative again, we’ll likely be seeing ice extent like what we saw at the end of the 1970s.

 

5 responses to “The Arctic Unmelts – Joe Bastardi Shows North Pole Was Unfrozen In The Summer of 1962”

  1. GrumpyDenier

    Ah, but was that a peer-reviewed submarine? They won’t accept the *evidence* otherwise.

  2. Stephen Richards

    Rather bizzarly, the following winter ’62 / ’63 was the coldest across europe for 200yrs.

  3. Juergen Uhlemann

    If you blog something like that on an AGW supporting site you might get banned. Happens to me some time ago. 😉
    A history of submarines and some of them surfaced at the north pole: http://www.csp.navy.mil/asl/Timeline.htm

    1. DirkH

      Never mention reality on a CGI site. They hate that.

  4. Mick J

    Have just been reading a guest blog at Judith Curry’s site that covers a project named “Back to 1870” which is reviewing historical accounts related top ice coverage. The blog suggests the claim that the 30/40s warming was limited to the Atlantic side may need rework. 🙂 Here is a section from the blog.

    ==============
    Historic footnote: The opening of a Northern sea route (also called the Northeast passage) has implications for understanding ice dynamics of the time, becoming an important supply route during World War 2 although until the period in question was not useable in any practical manner, as noted here:

    “In 1932, a Soviet expedition led by Professor Otto Yulievich Schmidt was the first to sail all the way from Arkhangelsk to the Bering Strait in the same summer without wintering en route. After a couple more trial runs, in 1933 and 1934, the Northern Sea Route was officially defined and open and commercial exploitation began in 1935. The next year, part of the Baltic Fleet made the passage to the Pacific where armed conflict with Japan was looming [link]

    The ‘Arctic Circle’ was an organisation based in Ottawa. Their annual ‘Arctic circular’ provides fascinating insights into the period. These short excerpts do not do justice to the publication which details many interesting facts about all facets of arctic life in the 1940’s.

    This item from 1949 refers to page 3 of this document; [link]

    “During the last three decades there has been a marked change in the climate of the Arctic which is being felt throughout the northern hemisphere where, especially, the mean temperature of the winters has increased considerably. In the North American sector this change is perhaps best understood and also most marked in Greenland, where long meteorological records exist from a number of points on the west coast, Thus at Jakobshavn, in latitude 690 13 North, the mean winter temperature for the years 1913-1922 was about 5 degrees F above the mean of 50 years and that of 1923-1932 almost 10.0 degrees F. above. In 1935-1936 the mean for the winter at Godhavn was 13.40 higher than the normal at the end of last century, that of Godthaab 7.60 and at Julianehaab 9.8oF. Increasing temperatures are not limited to the air; sea temperatures also have increased and while the amplitude is not so great, the result is even more profound and far reaching.”

    This from page 4:

    “The warming of the arctic seas has caused a diminishing of the arctic drift ice, which again has improved shipping conditions. In the 1907-1917 period Norwegian coal mines in Spitsbergen were able to load and export coal an average of 94 days each season, while 20 years later this period has been extended to 192 days. In 1878-80 Nordenskjold in the Vega was the first to navigate the North East Passage, but to do this he had to winter twice. In 1936 a convoy of fourteen Russian ships mode the trip in one season without encountering serious ice difficulties and during the last war this northern Sea route was used extensively by Soviet shipping. During 1942-45 even war ships, which are especially vulnerable to ice, were able to reach Thule without difficulty.

    The seas around Greenland have also been remarkably open in later years. The east coast, which frequently remained completely blocked by pack-ice, in 1931-33 was almost free from ice. “
    http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/10/historic-variations-in-arctic-sea-ice-part-ii-1920-1950/

    Also came across this site that presents ice related data from a Siberian viewpoint. A couple of graphs there that may offend the faithful. 🙂
    http://nwpi.krc.karelia.ru/e/climas/Ice/Ice_no_sat/XX_Arctic.htm

    Mick.

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