Are We Headed for a New Record Arctic Ice Low This September?

The National Snow and Ice Data Center reports that there is more ice cover now than last year at this time, but it's melting faster:

April was relatively warm.  Another problem is that this year's ice is unusually young and fragile.  The odds appear good that we'll set a new record low:

Sheldon Drobot at the Center for Astrodynamics Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder and colleagues have developed a sophisticated forecasting technique. The forecast considers sea ice extent, ice age, summer and winter temperatures, cloudiness, the phase of the Atlantic Oscillation, and climate trends as predictors....  As reported last month, the Arctic Oscillation was in its positive phase through the winter season, associated with a wind pattern helping to flush thick ice out of the Arctic, leaving thinner ice.  This is one of the factors helping to set the stage for pronounced ice losses this summer. Drobot predicts a 59% chance of a new record minimum this year; read the press release. Todd Arbetter of the U.S. National Ice Center tells us that his group is working to implement a version of Drobot's analysis scheme for operational forecasting....

Here are definitions of the Arctic and Atlantic oscillations.

Ronald Lindsay of the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory and collaborators recently published results from their own ice prediction system, based on a retrospective analysis of the modeled state of the ice and ocean system (see the paper cited below for details).  The model is successful in explaining around 75% of the year-to-year variations for the past few decades; for 2008, the model implies a very low, but not extreme, sea ice minimum. Lindsay cautions that sea ice conditions are now changing so rapidly that predictions based on relationships developed from the past 50 years of data may no longer apply.

We might not just break last year's September record low, we may blow it away:

As discussed in our April analysis, the ice cover this spring shows an unusually large proportion of young, thin first-year ice; about 30% of first-year ice typically survives the summer melt season, while 75% of the older ice survives. For a simple estimate of the likelihood of breaking last year's September record, we can apply survival rates from past years to this year's April ice cover.  This gives us 25 different estimates, one for each year that we have reliable ice-age data....  To avoid beating the September 2007 record low, more than 50% of this year’s first-year ice would have to survive; this has only happened once in the last 25 years, in 1996. If we apply the survival rates averaged over all years to current conditions, the end-of-summer extent would be 3.59 million square kilometers (1.39 million square miles). With survival rates similar to those in 2007, the minimum for the 2008 season would be only 2.22 million square kilometers (0.86 million square miles). By comparison the record low extent, set last September, was 4.28 million square kilometers (1.65 million square miles)....

Andrew Freedman of the Washington Post discussed the projections: Freedman: Arctic Sea Ice May Set Record Low (May 19).  Freedman refers to sources in addition to the Center report I've drawn on.

Comments

[Actual Meteorologist]

Record low ? Maybe for the last 30 years but many times in the past there was much less ice. We just didn't have satellites then. Evidence suggests the ice was often lower in the 1930's and much lower 5000 to 7000 years ago. The polar bears somehow survived these warmups. For more....

http://tinyurl.com/3npnht

On the other side of the earth, Antartica continues to cool slightly and the ice there is record size.

[r4 sdhc]

Exactly, it's when the land ice starts melting (Greenland, Antarctica) that we'll all have had it. There have been false scares in the past but this one is real. Watch this space. Geo-engineering projects.. Some may be valiant but mostly they are nothing but an excuse for us to feel less scared. Switch to renewable energy now - we might yet be able to save our consciences.

[essay help]

That's the price to pay because of our negligence towards mother earth!