In 2009 Al Gore predicted an ice-free Arctic by 2014. It never materialized – not even close.
Not to be outdone, John Kerry upped the ante and boldly proclaimed an ice-free Arctic by 2013. That too was utter nonsense.
In 2010 oceanography researcher Wieslaw Maslowski claimed: “Near ice-free summer Arctic might become a reality much sooner than GCMs predict“. This was reported in the press as “US Navy predicts summer ice free Arctic by 2016“.
Louis Fortier, scientific director of ArcticNet, a Canadian research network, said the sea ice was melting faster than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
An earlier National Climate Assessment report wrote that models that best match historical trends project a nearly ice-free Arctic in the summer by the 2030s.
Other real experts were less dramatic with their predictions. For example in 2009 Overland & Wang predicted that there would be an ice-free Arctic in the summer by 2037. A 2006 paper by Marika Holland et al. predicted “near ice-free September conditions by 2040”. Tony Heller, a.k.a. Steve Goddard, has an entire list of ice-free Arctic predictions.
Postponed again to 2050
Now polar conditions have stopped cooperating, and sea ice looks poised to defy the projections. A couple of days ago I wrote here about how natural cycles are now aligning to lead to more sea ice cover over the next one or two decades, and that global sea ice levels are back to normal levels – a fact that the end-of-world obsessors are finding difficult to come to terms with.
The recent sea ice developments even have the government-funded alarmist institutes now in a state of anyxiety. Already we are beginning to see them push back the predicted date of an ice-free Arctic. The latest example come from Germany’s prestigious, yet alarmist, Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) for polar and ocean research – so reports Germany’s Deutschland Funk national public radio here in an interview with Christiane Habermalz, Arctic Ny Alesund station engineer of the AWI.
In the interview Habermalz insists that the Arctic is the “hot-spot” of global warming, and that sea ice is melting faster than expected (Fact: it isn’t at all). She claims that the Arctic is warming 1.3°C per decade, basing that on only two decades of data: from 1993 to present. She also did not hold back from giving the impression that the trend would continue unabated, but then adding:
…in any case during the Arctic summer more and more of the sea ice is melting further and there are increasingly greater ice-free zones. That is something that also the scientists here at Ny Alesund have said, and that when the melting of the sea ice continues the scenario of an ice-free pole by 2040/2050 is very likely.”
2050? That’s a far cry from what we’ve been hearing from other experts over the last years.
There are some interesting statements here. First Habermalz is implying that it will take a sustained 1.3°C per decade of Arctic warming for this to happen. But as most people who have read about the Arctic know, temperatures there go in cycles. The warm cycle has already reached its peak and so the temperature level there needed to melt the ice by 2030 will not be reached. Thus the 2040/50 ice-free scenario won’t happen as calculated by the AWI. (By ice-free, we mean over a number of years, and not a single outlier year, which cannot be excluded). The AWI knows it, and so now we are seeing a conscious postponement of an ice-free Arctic.
Of course expect the AWI and similar institutes to keep ringing the alarm bells, but at the same time quietly move the goalposts back as reality dawns.
Finally, what do the experts project this summer’s Arctic sea ice minimum to be this year? Joe Bastardi tells us at his Saturday Summary here at the 13:15 min mark:
US government NCEP forecast for Arctic sea ice anomaly this year. Source: Weatherbell.
Obviously the AWI has gotten the message, and so now the Arctic horror predictions have been pushed back to a future time, one far enough into the future that by then everyone will have forgotten all the silly, hysterical predictions made during the 2000s.
I love it! They just keep moving the goal posts back and back.
The whole AGW foolishness is reminiscent of “Move along. Nothing to see here.”
Or, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
That they are not called out by the media on this is outrageous.
This little video tells the reality of the current slightly warm period.
https://vimeo.com/14366077
2013 and 2014 had the shortest time above freezing in the whole of the DMI record.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Yes there are some warm peaks in the Arctic winter when temp has lifted from a long-term average of 245K to 250K, but that is not going to melt ice !
Moving the goalposts …
Anywy, german angst will still be online and dominate the MSM.
Ich kann gar nicht so viel essen wie ich kotzen möchte (german idiom).
Being in the federal system in geology i know what politics is about – and it is not about facts.
Cheers
Roger
“32% of the 56 CMIP5 ensemble
members evaluated for the RCP4.5 emission scenario
reach nearly ice free conditions (less than 1.0×10^6 km2) by
the end of this century, with some showing a nearly ice-free
state as early as 2020. However, we must acknowledge the
large uncertainty in future greenhouse gas emissions. While
on time-scales of decades the sea ice projections are relatively
insensitive to the prescribed greenhouse gas forcing,
this is not the case by the end of the century. Thus, the range
of available results does not necessarily represent the “true”
uncertainty as to when a seasonally ice-free Arctic may be
realized.”
J Stroeve et al, Trends in Arctic sea ice extent from CMIP5, CMIP3
and observations, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L16502, doi:10.1029/2012GL052676, 2012
David,
The statement, “While on time-scales of decades the sea ice projections are relatively insensitive to the prescribed greenhouse gas forcing, this is not the case by the end of the century” (or something similar) is made often.
What evidence exists to suggest a long-term correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentration and polar sea ice extent?
Good question. My next post shows that there has been no correlation between CO2 and global sea ice since the satellite record began.
Ahhh.. 5 Chimps have their say. 🙂
The climate models are un-validated, or more correctly invalidated, junk.
They can’t even get the main thing, ie temperature, within cooee!
Why are you bothering to even quote them ???????
In front of present and past alarmists’ predictions, those of Nostradamus do not look as stupid as these….
By the way, why no longer are there Nostradamus predictions (about imminence of “end of the world”)? Has it been substituted with AGW?
They define 2 million square kilometers as “ice free” that is a lot of area to call zero. Bigger than 90% of he world’s countries.
What’s the big deal with an ice-free Arctic anyway? Why all the fuss?
The alarmists claim it’s one of those so-called tipping points that would lead to global catastrophe. I don’t believe it, though. The Arctic was ice-free during the MWP and the earth still slipped into a bitter ice little ice age.
“The Arctic was ice-free during the MWP and the earth still slipped into a bitter ice little ice age.”
That is a weak explanation.
If the reason for a temperature increase is only present for a certain period of time, the “tipping point” effect might get stopped by the end of that period.
A volcano might lead to cooling, which might change albedo which might trigger a “tipping point”, but the effect might get stopped again, when the ash in the atmosphere is removed.
The situation with CO2 is different, as we expect it to stay (and to increase even further).
So, what is your explanation to this Sod:
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NSIDC%20NHandSHiceExtension12monthRunningAverage.gif#sthash.hkQ4eNa7.dpuf
“So, what is your explanation to this Sod:”
I wrote a reply to this, but it looks like it got lost.
Did you do a statistical analysis of both graphs?
What was the result?
So dog ate your homework, priceless.
“So dog ate your homework, priceless.”
no. The dog ate YOUR homework.
The lost meassage asked the same question: Did you do a statistical analysis of both graphs and what was your result?
Bring it on!
No Sod, it did not, did you? What did you find?
i can see a huge difference in significancy of a linear trend by only looking at the graphs.
You obviously can not, if you could, you would not need to ask.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NSIDC%20NHandSHiceExtension12monthRunningAverage.gif#sthash.hkQ4eNa7.dpuf
Sod, confirmation bias lies in the eye of the beholder. In other words, yet again you are unable to come up with anything but hand-waving.
The tipping point effect might be stopped? sod, we know that warmunists invent words like tipping point to change their definition as they go along. The correct word is a runaway feedback loop. So how do you think you stop that. Or you could call it the flip to another strange attractor, or state, or ergodic orbit. “Tipping point” is a nonscientific word coined by journalists or warmunists.
I know you just spread your muddled thinking intentionally, but why here? Do you think you can delude any of us with your ignorant kid-words?
“The correct word is a runaway feedback loop. So how do you think you stop that. ”
It does not matter, how you call it. a stronger external effect can of course always stop it.
so a huge volcano eruption could reduce temperature so much, that a “runnaway feedback loop” of albedo change –> more cold –> more albedo change gets started.
But that effect could stop again, when the Volcano effect ends and the warming caused by the end of it turns out to be stronger than the “runaway” effect.
It is really easy. Please keepp asking questions, i love to help you out!
The early- to mid-Holocene was peppered with Arctic Ice Melt events:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379113004162
None of these led to a “tipping point”; indeed, the Little Ice Age transpired thousands of years later. But for ALL interglacial periods, the eventual temperature trend has been downward at some inevitable point. This suggests either a strong natural cooling force or a strong negative feedback somewhere in the system.
Warmists believe that the current atmospheric CO2 concentration is so elevated as to be sufficient to prevent descent into a full-fledged ice age. I’m not so sure.