U. Of Illinois - 10/18 - Arctic Ice Anomaly Line Approaching Bottom Of Already Recalibrated Chart

[hatrack]

[kestrel91316]

1. So?

:sarcasm:

:banghead:

[hatrack]

3. Yeah, Mars is also experience this so-called "global warming"!!!

So THERE!!!!

[XemaSab]

2. "Where did I put that scotch tape?"

"I had it out just the other day..."

[tom_paine]

4. Yew goldang liberal hippie scientists and yer 'facts'

Bush Rebfederacy Forever, Commies!

:beer: :beer:

[Nihil]

5. Ouch.

Another few bouts of recalibration and it will show a gently dipping
wiggly line followed by a cliff edge.

:scared:

[n2doc]

6. You know, Al Gore could use this chart in his lectures just like the CO2 chart

That part in AIT where he gets on the lift to show the industrial CO2 rise? Except he'll need a tunnel.....or a basement. "Elevator...going down!"

[ovidsen]

7. Graphics question

Can you give us the original address for this intriging graphic? I'd like to spead it around.

[GliderGuider]

8. Right click on the image an you'll be able to copy the URL

The image is linked back to its original source.

[ovidsen]

13. Thanks!

I used to know that trick a year or two ago, but it slipped my mind. (Senility?? Gawd, I hope not.) In any case, you have my sincere gratitude.

[XemaSab]

9. Here's an excellent site for ice:

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/

[hatrack]

10. 10/19 - Whoops! Looks like it's bottoming out yet again.

This updates automatically, so now, one day after the original post, scissors-and-glue time again.

Unbelievable.

[XemaSab]

12. Le sigh...

A climatologist's work is never done.

[phantom power]

11. just so i'm super duper clear about this...

the arctic ice cover is still decreasing in the 3rd week of October. That's what is happening, right?

[hatrack]

14. No, the cover is slowly increasing - this graph measures how far from historic averages the cover is

It's a measurement of the anomaly, not the cover itself.

[phantom power]

15. Right then. Glad I asked.

So, this graph could conceivably never level off, until the ice cover bottoms out at zero.

[hatrack]

16. If the divergence from historic data continues to grow . . .

. . . and something tells me it might do exactly that, this could keep dropping for quite some time.

Call me crazy, but . . .

[phantom power]

17. Well, we all figured the re-freeze would be slower due to albedo decreases.

and possibly current changes too.

If you're crazy, we've got the same bad circuit.

[XemaSab]

18. It bottomed out on September 16

with millions of square kilometers less ice than usual, so the ice as a whole has a long way to go to "catch up." It may not be that the refreeze is proceeding abnormally slowly, but that the curve has been pushed back a ways due to the unusually low minimum.

The thing that I just can't get my head around is how even though we had an unusually large ice buildup in Antarctica, the global ice total is still about 2 million km2 low.

But it's sort of ominous that many of the penguin nesting failures this past season had more to do with too much ice than too little... :scared:

[phantom power]

19. If the refreeze was proceeding at a normal rate...

then the anomaly curve would be flattened out. But it keeps dropping. So I figure the refreeze must also be slower than normal.

[XemaSab]

20. Good point...

Dumb question: does sea ice refreeze around the edges or do floes form in the open sea then drift together?

'Cause if it forms around the edges then the refreeze could be a function of edge to area, which would account for the lagging curve, no? Because there's less edge for ice to grow on?

[Systematic Chaos]

21. Could someone take this data set and try to put a trend line through it?

How soon would it predict that we hit the entire area of the arctic?

[XemaSab]

24. Well it's not amount of ice

It's departure from the average. So the ice is actually growing, but not fast enough to bring us back to where we should be for this time of year.

It's better shown in this graph, which shows the last year:

[Systematic Chaos]

25. Right, but what I mean is...

...how long would it take before the "anomaly" became as large as the entire Arctic Ocean? That would, by definition, mean no ice up there.

[XemaSab]

27. I see... Considering that we bottomed out at 3 m and *that* was 2 m low,

yeah.

It's remeniscent of ecology... the population of a species might bounce up and down, but once it hits zero, it ain't bouncing no more....

[Systematic Chaos]

22. The recalibrated chart has been recalibrated. Now scaling to +/- 3M km2

:kick:

[XemaSab]

23. Oh good!

They found the tape. :hide:

[Systematic Chaos]

26. I'm hearing the music in my head from that one SUV commercial.

The one where the music plays while the red line crawls towards the edge of the map...

then off the map...

then off the table and onto the floor below....

:eyes:

[XemaSab]

28. I, on the other hand, am reminded of the old Duracell commercials with the rabbit...

It just keeps going and going....

[Systematic Chaos]

29. Kick in the spirit of Jerry Lewis

waiting for that telethon tote board to flip.