Plentiful Arctic Ice Sept. 2021

Once again the data embarrass the approved narrative.
The Embarrassing Pause In Arctic Sea Ice Loss Has Lasted 17 Years, Defying IPCC, NSIDC Predictions
By Kenneth Richard on 8. January 2024

“ince the dramatical decline of the ice extent in 2007, the summer Arctic sea ice area has not declined further.” – Astrup Jensen, 2023
Scientists have been using the year 2007 as the starting point for assessing Arctic sea ice trends for nearly a decade. A 2015 study published in Nature Climate Change reported a “near-zero trend” in summer sea ice over the 7 years from 2007-2013.



Image Source: Swart et al., 2015 (full paper)
Another 10 years have now passed and there is still no evidence of a further decline in sea ice.

This is interesting because since late 2007 scientists have predicted Arctic sea ice would decline rapidly as CO2 continued rising – from 385 ppm in 2007 to 422 ppm today. There were 20 models referenced by the IPCC (AR4) projecting a 40% loss of sea ice by 2050 due to an allegedly enhance greenhouse effect associated with anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

But a new study reveals there’s been no declining trend in summer sea ice area over the last 17 years, and “no apparent correlation” between CO2 and sea ice trends.

“The Arctic Sea ice extent is measured by satellites and varies by day, month and year, and the yearly minimum ice extent will occur in a day of September month every year. The ice extent is much lower now (2023) than in 1978, when the satellite measurements began. However, it has not been a gradual decline. A major decline happened during the years 1997 – 2007. Before that the decline was minimal and after that period, there was no significant downward trend.”

“These data show that there is no apparent correlation between the variable extent of the Arctic and the Antarctic Sea ice and the gradually increasing CO2-concentrations in the atmosphere as proposed by NSIDC, IPCC and others, also for these areas of cold climate.”



Image Source: Astrup Jensen, 2023

 

I have been noticing that warmist/alarmists have become quiet in a lot of weather metrics because it doesn't meet their cult religion paradigm.

Tropical Storm trends slow decline
Hurricane trends stable
Major Tornado trends in decline
Snowfall trends slight overall increase
Wildfire trends in decline
Drought trends in decline
Flooding trends in slight increase

This is why they continually fill their pants over spike warming events that are predominantly generated by El-Nino's and no warming in between them which shows that CO2 doesn't do a dam thing at the 430 ppm level.

Fact: No Hot Spot exist.

Fact: No positive Feedback Loop exist.

Fact: The AGW conjecture has failed as CO2 isn't a driver of warming trends.

It is the warmist/alarmists who the real deniers because they by design completely ignore hard data facts because they are fully invested in a climate cult where they are taught to fear a doomsday future, that is a sign of mental illness.

 

So much ice!
For This Time Of Year, Arctic Sea Ice Has Risen To It’s Highest Level in 21 Years
By P Gosselin on 14. January 2024

Some alarmist scientists claim it’s the hottest year on record, yet Arctic sea ice for this date stands at its highest level in 21 years.
Hat-tip: EIKE here.


Source: NSIDC

This year’s reading – up to January 8 – has now far exceeded the average for the years 2011-2010, also exceeds the average for the years 2001-2010 and points directly upwards with regard to the average for the years 1991-2000:



Source: NSIDC

Much like Greenland, the Arctic continues to defy the dogmatic prophecies of the AGW party; and the party has long needed a time machine to confirm its hopeless predictions: “Ice-free in summer by 2014”.

Where’s the melt?

The latest update shows the tide seems to have turned for Arctic sea ice, especially this season, which has seen the largest extent in 21 years (since 2003). At 13,741 km², the total area for 2024 is well above the 2011-2020 average and even exceeds the 2001-2010 average:



Source. NSIDC

 

Something has gone wrong with the quote function. Jack wrote:

That's the problem with claiming that the down- (or up-) phase of a natural cycle is a man-made secular trend: pretty soon, the cycle proves you wrong.

2011-2020.

13,741 thousand km².[/QUOTE]

 

It's more difficult to model the ice than has been believed.
New Study: Greenland’s Ice Stream Flow Patterns Change Internally, ‘Spontaneously’ Within Centuries
By Kenneth Richard on 1. March 2024

Ice flowed out of the interior of the Greenland ice sheet at much stronger rates and with much greater variability than today throughout the Holocene – or until about 2,000 years ago.
New research (Jansen et al., 2024) has determined Greenland’s ice streams vary according to internal processes, and not necessarily due to external changes in geothermal heat flux anomalies or climate.

These internally-variable ice stream patterns can change significantly in magnitude within time frames of just a few centuries, not the long-assumed 10,000- or 100,000-year time-spans.

This discovery of Greenland’s internally variable centennial-scale ice stream patterns should strongly impact modeled estimates of Greenland’s ice stream-based contributions to sea level rise, as it has long been assumed external factors (such as anthropogenic CO2 emissions) play an instrumental role in ice stream dynamics.

“Our results contradict the assumption that the ice stream has been stable throughout the Holocene in its current form, with distinct shear margins [ice flow volume changes] on time scales of hundreds of years, which is a major challenge for realistic mass-balance and sea-level rise projections.”



Image Source: Jansen et al., 2024

 

Arctic ice continues to be plentiful.
Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute Shows January Arctic Sea Ice Now 20 Years Stable!
By P Gosselin on 27. March 2024

Winter sea ice in Arctic stable over past 20 years…has even recovered somewhat.
Hat-tip: Klimanachrichten

Arctic sea ice extent as recorded by Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Bremerhaven, Germany, looks at the situation in January 2024. Despite the record temperatures reported, the ice in the Arctic has recovered somewhat.

The slight recovery trend since the Arctic minimum was reached is continuing at the beginning of 2024, with the sea ice extent at the beginning of the year below the average value for the years 1981 – 2010, but in the lower range of the extreme values (minimum / maximum) of this international climate normal period (Figure 1).

If we look at the new reference period 1991 – 2020 introduced by the World Meteorological Organization in 2021, January 2024 is roughly in line with the mean value of this period (see interactive graphic). The average Arctic sea ice extent in January was 13.99 million square kilometers, around 400,000 square kilometers greater than the ice cover in January over the last 20 years (Figure 2). During the month, the extent increased by approximately 29,000 square kilometers per day, which was slower than the average increase from 1981 to 2010.”


Image: Screenshot Meereisportal.de

Among highest in past 20 years

The above chart indeed shows a stable trend over the past 2 decades. According to the AWI:

This year’s maximum sea ice extent most likely occurred on February 27, at 14.94 million square kilometers. The monthly average ice extent in February was 14.65 million square kilometers.”

That makes it higher than 15 of the past 20 years.

Compared to the long-term average for the years 2003 – 2014, it is noticeable that the sea ice cover in the northern Barents Sea is lower, but the Greenland Sea and the northern Baltic Sea in the Gulf of Bothnia and the coastal zones of the Barents Sea have more extensive sea ice areas. This indicates lower and longer-lasting cold periods in these regions.”

 

It's not nearly as warm as it was.
Nature Publication: Researchers Find Arctic Region 10,000 Years Ago Warmer Than Today
By P Gosselin on 27. April 2024

Early Holocene was warmer 10,000 years ago…Arctic ice melted.

The European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE presents its latest climate video at its Youtube channel.

Examined today is a paper appearing in the journal Nature Communications titled: “Seasonal sea-ice in the Arctic’s last ice area during the Early Holocene”

The authors looked at sea ice in the region of the Lincoln Sea, bordering northern Greenland and Canada, will be the final stronghold of perennial Arctic sea-ice in a warming climate.





According to the paper, “Modelling studies suggest a transition from perennial to seasonal sea-ice during the Early Holocene, a period of elevated global temperatures around 10,000 years ago.”

The researchers have found “marine proxy evidence for the disappearance of perennial sea-ice in the southern Lincoln Sea during the Early Holocene, which suggests a widespread transition to seasonal sea-ice in the Arctic Ocean.”

“Seasonal sea-ice conditions were tightly coupled to regional atmospheric temperatures,” the authors stated.

 

Increased ice hampers shipping.
Arctic Sea Ice ‘Choke Points’ Reducing NW Passage Shipping Season Length By 5-14 Weeks Since 2007
By Kenneth Richard on 18. July 2024

Global warming was supposed to open up Arctic region shipping routes, making the Northwest Passage easier and less risky to traverse. Per a new study, the opposite has happened.
As we reported earlier this year, while a declining trend in Arctic sea ice was observed from the 1990s to 2007, there has been no trend reduction in Arctic sea ice since then. A 17-year pause.

It has long been a “common belief” that shipping through Canada’s Northwest Passage would become “more viable” with a warming Arctic and a consequent reduction in sea ice impediments.

Observations trump beliefs, however.

The East Beaufort Sea has increasingly been generating sea ice “choke points” that have reduced the length of the shipping season from 27 weeks (half the year) during 2007-2011 down to 13 weeks (summer only) during 2017-2021. And, as scientists are now warning, “the negative trend [in shipping season length] shows no sign of reversing.”



Image Source: Cook et al., 2024

 

Lots of ice in the Arctic this summer.
Another summer with nearly normal temps in the Arctic region – Arctic sea ice showing resiliency
By Meteorologist Paul Dorian
…overall temperatures this season are repeating a pattern that began many years ago in that they are running at nearly normal levels which happens to be quite close to the…

 

The evidence is clear.
Summer Melting Has Plateaued: July Arctic Sea Ice Extent Hasn’t Fallen In 17 Years!
By P Gosselin on 6. August 2024

July Arctic sea ice area has been stable for 17 years. Nothing is melting anymore.

Hat-tip: Snowfan here.



Image: DMI Arctic Plots Sea Ice Extent

The National Snow And Ice Data center (NSIDC) analysis of August 4, 2024 shows that the Arctic sea ice extent in July 2024 has been stable for 17 years, without any downward trend: there is no additional melting even in early summer.

Recall that leading experts say trend statements can be made with 17 years of data.

Moreover, the ice masses on Greenland show an unusual summer growth of more than 2 billion tons (2 Gt) at the end of July 2024 in the middle of the melting season, see here: polarportal.dk.

 

All quiet on the Greenland front.
Greenland Icecap Carries On As Normal
By Paul Homewood
Greenland’s Ice Sheet has been perfectly normal this last 12 months, with the Surface Mass Balancing increasing in size at the normal rate . . . .

 

Recent peer-reviewed research has dealt another blow to "consensus" climate orthodoxy.
The Overlooked Role of Atmospheric Rivers in Arctic Sea Ice Loss: A Challenge to the CO2-Centric Narrative
Charles Rotter
The Arctic’s fate is not as straightforward as many would have us believe, and neither should be the policies we enact in response to its changes. . . .


The dominant narrative in climate science holds that Arctic sea ice loss is almost entirely driven by human-induced global warming, primarily from CO2 emissions. Yet, a Nature Communications study titled Role of Atmospheric Rivers in Shaping Long-Term Arctic Sea Ice Variability highlights a crucial factor that has been largely overlooked: atmospheric rivers (ARs). These ARs—narrow, intense streams of water vapor originating in tropical and mid-latitude regions—play a significant role in Arctic sea ice variability, a phenomenon that traditional climate models fail to adequately capture.

By concentrating so heavily on CO2 as the main culprit of Arctic sea ice decline, mainstream climate models ignore the complex interactions between natural atmospheric phenomena and sea ice variability. This omission exposes the significant limitations in our understanding of the Arctic’s climate, and by extension, the reliability of the climate models driving current policy.

What Are Atmospheric Rivers, and Why Are They Important?

Atmospheric rivers are immense, fast-moving channels of water vapor that can transport moisture across vast distances. These rivers are known for delivering enormous quantities of water in the form of rain or snow when they make landfall, but their influence on the Arctic is less understood. The Nature Communications study shows that ARs can have a profound impact on the Arctic’s sea ice cover, both in terms of accelerating melt and contributing to periods of ice recovery.

These atmospheric rivers inject warm, moist air into the Arctic, which increases the temperature in the region and melts sea ice. The moisture they bring also plays a significant role in cloud formation, which in turn affects the energy balance of the Arctic system. Yet, despite this, ARs are often left out of the conversation when discussing Arctic ice loss, as the focus remains firmly fixed on CO2 emissions. This begs the question: why are such natural forces so often ignored in the narrative?

Abstract

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) reaching high-latitudes in summer contribute to the majority of climatological poleward water vapor transport into the Arctic. This transport has exhibited long term changes over the past decades, which cannot be entirely explained by anthropogenic forcing according to ensemble model responses. Here, through observational analyses and model experiments in which winds are adjusted to match observations, we demonstrate that low-frequency, large-scale circulation changes in the Arctic play a decisive role in regulating AR activity and thus inducing the recent upsurge of this activity in the region. It is estimated that the trend in summertime AR activity may contribute to 36% of the increasing trend of atmospheric summer moisture over the entire Arctic since 1979 and account for over half of the humidity trends in certain areas experiencing significant recent warming, such as western Greenland, northern Europe, and eastern Siberia. This indicates that AR activity, mostly driven by strong synoptic weather systems often regarded as stochastic, may serve as a vital mechanism in regulating long term moisture variability in the Arctic.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49857-y
. . . .

 

In Greenland it's still colder than the Holocene average.
Not About CO2…Greenland Still Much Colder Today Than Much Of The Past 10,000 Years
By P Gosselin on 4. October 2024

Norwegian climate blog site avdekt.no here reports how the GISP2 ice core data from Greenland shows the current temperature is well below the Holocene average.

Moreover, these temperatures also match perfectly with the historical sources in Norway and Europe, according to avedkt.no.

The chart below shows a temperature reconstruction based on ice cores going back more than 10,000 years.

Chart: avdekt.no

The temperature over the Holocene was above today’s level on at least 9 occasions, each spanning many years. Indeed today’s temperature is still on the cool side for the Holocene.

Although man is having a heating impact on today’s modern climate through land-use and modest greenhouse gas warming, natural solar and oceanic factors are still far more powerful than man’s impact. How else can the wide variations occurring over the Holocene be explained?

Today’s temperature is still 2°C below the warmer peaks seen 7,900, 7,000 and 3,400 years ago.

The Greenland GISP2 ice core is viewed as a gold standard when it comes to proxy data-based temperature reconstructions, unlike other proxy data reconstructions based on dubious tree ring analyses.

 

There's been significant ice accumulation in Greenland since the 1950's.
Under Arctic Ice, Secret Military Base Emerges in Images
Micah Hanks, The Debrief

 

The Arctic is icy.
The Barents Sea Was Seasonally Ice Free For Much Of The Holocene…Today It’s Ice-Covered Year-Round
By Kenneth Richard on 2. December 2024

More evidence has emerged suggesting there is more sea ice in the Arctic today than nearly any time in the last 8000 years.
According to a new study, biomarker evidence suggests the Barents Sea (Arctic) was seasonally “ice free” from ~8000 to ~2100 years ago, or back when the CO2 concentration was said to be about 265 ppm.

Since that warmer Arctic period, the climate cooled and sea ice extent expanded.

For the last 2100 years sea there has been year-round sea ice in this region . Today the minimum sea ice coverage is in August and September, whereas the maximum ice coverage is in March/April.

The modern period (1988-2007) has among the highest sea ice levels of the Holocene, with ~80% coverage in spring (Koseoglu, 2019).



Image Source: Telesinski et al., 2024


Image Source: Koseoglu, 2019

 

Greenland was ice free when there was less CO2 in the atmosphere.
Central Greenland Was Recently Ice-Free And Covered With Plants When CO2 Was Under 300 ppm
By Kenneth Richard on 3. January 2025

Today, with CO2 levels supposedly in the “dangerously high” range, Central Greenland has 3 kilometers of ice piled atop it.
Scientists have known since the GISP2 borehole was drilled in 1993 that Central Greenland deglaciated at least once in the late Pleistocene (Bierman et al., 2024). Indeed, the Summit of the modern Greenland ice sheet was actually ice-free at some point between 250,000 and 1.1 million years ago – which is relatively recent from a geological perspective.

Plants, wood, insects, fungi and other remnants suggestive of vegetation were recovered from the bottom of the boring site. This is quite a contrast to today’s 3000-meters-high ice sheet at this same location.

“The presence of poppy, spike-moss, fungal sclerotia, woody tissue, and insect parts in the GISP2 till shows that tundra vegetation once covered central Greenland, mandating that the island was largely ice-free.”

The atmospheric CO2 concentration is presumed to have ranged between 275 and 290 ppm during the Late Pleistocene, or during this same period when Greenland was ice-free. These sub-300 ppm CO2 levels are thought to be the same as they were from 1700 to 1900 (the Little Ice Age), when, as today, Central Greenland has remained buried in kilometers of ice.

The authors of this study use existing knowledge of Greenland’s climate (for example, Summit’s mean July temperature is -7°C) to calculate how much warmer Central Greenland was “when the ice was gone” during the last 1.1 million years. Controlling for lapse rate, Central Greenland’s average surface air temperatures were likely +3 to 7°C in July when it had no ice sheet.

The atmospheric CO2 concentration thus appears to be largely unrelated to either Greenland’s climate or its state of glaciation.



Image Source: Bierman et al., 2024