kiwistonewall

Main Arctic Basin anomaly now exceeds 1979-2000 mean. Also East Siberian Sea and Beaufort Sea! The Canadian Archipelago is exactly at the mean. This means that in these areas, the ice exceeds the norm! Arctic: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IM...om.region.1.jpg East Siberia http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IM...om.region.9.jpg Beaufort Sea: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IM...m.region.11.jpg Canadian Archipelago: just on the mean: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IM...m.region.12.jpg While some of the surrounding minor areas are still negative, the main ice field is ABOVE the long term mean. And the rate of freeze has picked up over the last 2-3 days after a few days of go slow. All this while there are unseasonal snow falls all over the world (Just google snow!) and while solar cycle 24 fails to fire. We have certainly reverted back to the weather of more than 30 years agao, and it has happened fast - Globally, (at both Poles) we are currently at a mean position, (Zero anomaly) but the direction is straight up, meaning, as a whole, we will soon have a lot more ice than normal. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IM...a.withtrend.jpg

Hi to all in the UK (from warm Australia) Hope the Winter isn't going to be to bad up there this year. Ice images that I'll be updating regularly at these links. (You may need to hit refresh to get the latest image) 1. Speed of ice recovery (7 day smoothing) showing current rate and recent years against the long term mean. http://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp183/k...ilyincrease.jpg and 2. the AMSR-E data with a 1979-2000 mean: http://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp183/k...ewall/AMSRE.jpg See more at the sea ice thread at Solar Cycle 24

In any "difference" map, remember that you are looking at the difference between two images produced from radar reflections. The blue area isn't necessarily all open seas sea, but areas of ice below a certain threshold (if the computers interpret the data correctly) usually 30%. So some of that blue sea would look more like the image I posted previously, sold ice covered by pools of melt water. Some of it would be gaps in the 30% ice turning solid, which wouild be faster than open water freezing. They do fly over & try and recalibrate the programs and instruments, but that just leads to the problem of comparing season to season. The satellites change. The software has changed. And the ice is always changing. Keep that all in mind, and appreciate the great job the Ice folk do in getting the data produced as quickly as they do. But remember the limitations, and be slow to draw conclusions. So all we can say is that the instruments are registering a lot more ice than there was a few weeks ago. This is likely a combination of ice already there being picked up due to surface changes, and to new ice forming. I'm not jumping to the conclusion that it's getting very cold up there, very fast. The other explanation is that the ice never melted as much as the charts showed in the first place. Maybe its a bit of both.

Coming back fast? Maybe not, I think the surface ice melt (identified as open water) is re-freezing, so that area (already mostly ice) is now being picked up by the data processing of the radar signals. The freeze may not be any faster than in normal years. I think there was a lot more ice this summer, but it just didn't show up on the instruments. Some of the speed of the 2008 melt in Sept. may have been just surface melt pools which are now freezing just as fast. (or faster) Comparing the speed of ice growth in the 1st week of October in the last three years.. 2006 59911 2007 64442 2008 101741 = 1 Million Sq kms every 9.8 days at this rate. That's 60% "faster" than the same periods last 2 years. If I'm wrong, then there is some serious cooling going on. So I think its 60,000 sq kms/day real freeze, and 40,000 sq kms of surface melt freezing over. Though I note that other years get up to over 100,000 sq kms /day later in October. (either real freeze or surface pools re-freezing) If you want to check out how the computers "compute" the ice area, check out the this site (The Goddard data: http://nsidc.org/data/docs/daac/nasateam/index.html The AMSR-E use different algorithms for their data, since their satellite was launched about 2002. The Goddard data goes back to 1979, but I think they used two different satellites over that time. My point in all this is that we have radar instruments reflecting of ice/snow/water/rain and converted by a computer program to ice data based on 1 pixel per 25sqKms. The computer programs make guesses. Every year the ice is different -New, First year, multi year. So you can't accurately compare year to year, especially in summer. But in any year, the trend from day to day is useful. Makes for fun arguments tho', whatever "side" you are on in the great debate.

The Methane Clathrates are 800m deep in the soil, so hardly going to be released by the likely temperature rises in the next few centuries (assuming we get any temperature rise at all). The Myth is that this stuff is sitting in the permafrost and Tundra just waiting to be boiled off. It can't exist unless under about 20atmospheres of pressure - so in deep water, or in deep sediments. And under that pressure, it's stable at much higher temperatures as well. Changing the temperature is almost totally irrelevant in releasing Methane. Though it is a target for extraction! This is a Myth. Just Google Methane Clathrate stability for background.