Urbana-Champaign, Illinois - Satellites began to measure the Earth's cryosphere in 1979. Because of a warm summer, the Northern Hemisphere sea ice area has reached new historic lows in 2007. Around August 28th, the new minimum of 2.99 million squared kilometers of sea ice easily surpassed the previous record of 4.01 million squared kilometers set in 2005. These numbers available at the web page of Dr William Chapman and his team at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign were widely publicized.
Some analysts have speculated that the new record could be evidence of global warming. But is it? Even though it may sound very complicated, it turns out that the Earth is round. At the global scale, there is not one polar region but, in fact, two. There is also sea ice on the Southern Hemisphere. It turns out that the Antarctic sea ice area reached 16.2 million squared kilometers in 2007 - a new absolute record high since the measurements started in 1979: see this graph.
During the year, the Southern Hemisphere sea ice area fluctuates between 2 and 16 million squared kilometers or so while the Northern Hemisphere sea ice area fluctuates approximately between 3 and 14 million squared kilometers. The climate models predict warming in Antarctica and they are increasingly inconsistent with the observations.
The South pole winter is now about 0.6 Celsius cooler than in 1957.
Via Marc Morano.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
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Antarctic sea ice at record high
| | 8 snail comments :
Please.
See BOTH graphs. THey are in the same directory, one next another.
South
North
Dear Arivero, I've surely seen both, and in fact, dedicated 1/2 of this article to the North even though there has been another article dedicated purely to the North in the summer. Surely you don't want to say that the North is discriminated against, do you?
Actually the ice data and some other warming data seem to indicate a discrimination N/S, do you think? But if we are speaking global, it seems we need to add both. After all, you do not get the euler characteristic by integrating the local properties of only a part of a manifold, but the whole.
Dear Alejandro, I find it completely obvious that the Arctic climate is given much more room in all media because a certain class of people finds such an arrangement much more convenient because it fills their pockets by dirty money.
Ad hoc integrals over the Earth are just ad hoc integrals over the Earth and they surely don't have any importance that would be even remotely comparable to the Euler character of a manifold.
My point here is that even the question about the sea ice that is often presented as evidence for "climate change" is not global in character. By "global", I suppose that people mean something that influences pretty much all regions of the world. That's obviously not the case with the sea ice because as much as 1/2 of the planet disagrees with the assertions of the ideology.
If one has a theory (here: "global warming") and it only qualitatively agrees with one-half of the observations, as far as I can say, it is a falsified theory.
The recent (30 years) warming is largely confined to the Northern Hemisphere and theories that fail to explain this rather basic observation are in bad shape - do you agree at least with this trivial statement?
Indeed I agree. The theory, at least in its more divulgated form, is still in poor shape, but at least the experimentalist keep recording data.
Besides, a decent theory should explain why the ozone hole opened first in the south, where oceanic data seems to be more stable than in north.
Why would global warming models, which deal with greenhouse gases in the troposphere, be expected to predict the ozone hole, which results from chemical reactions in the mid and upper stratosphere?
For what it is worth, just a little research around the 'net reveals that the annual onset of the ozone hole requires formation of specifics kinds of ice crystals that requires temperatures of -78 Celsius.
While that temperature occurs with regularity for long periods of time in the stratosphere above the Antarctic, it occurs less frequently, and for shorter periods elsewhere in the world. Thus, the initial appearance of the ozone hole above Antarctica is not mysterious, nor is the fact that it is larger and lasts longer than other ozone holes that have at times appeared in other places, primarily the Arctic.
All of this discussion is with reference to Antarctic sea ice area.
Are there any data about Antarctic ice (land and sea) volume?
Surely, in the long run, that is far more significant.
By the way, I hold no brief for either side of this debate -- I merely seek the truth.
Having said that however, I have recently returned from a climbing trip to Mt. Kenya which I used to climb regularly 20 years ago. The famous Diamond Glacier is now a small patch of snow, and the Lewis Glacier is dramatically smaller. Flying over Kilimanjaro shows a similar decline.
Dear Scotjack, I surely think that you are not right.
The sea ice area is more important than sea ice volume because it has at least some impact on the world: it co-determines the average albedo of the Earth and it influences navigation on the oceans.
Neither volume nor area of sea ice determine the sea levels because of Archimedes' law.
The volume is more difficult to measure for the same reason - it has a smaller impact on the things that matter.
The volume of ice sheets on the land are a different topic and they are also measured because the volume is dominated by the upper boundary, nor lower boundary, whose shape can be measured from space.
The average thickness - the volume/area ratio - is determined primarily by the frequency of temperature fluctuations. If you assume them to be constant, there is no reason that in the long run, the area and the volume would have different trends.
The glaciers have been retreating since 1850 or so as the Earth was leaving the Little Ice Age.
Best
Lubos
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