Arctic Sea Ice in 2015

Every year the sea ice that covers the northern part of the Earth expands and contracts though the winter and the summer. The minimum extent of the sea ice is usually reached some time in September, after which it starts to reform.

Human caused greenhouse gas pollution has increased the surface temperatures of the earth, as measured on the land at about heat height with thermometers, and on the sea at the surface, mainly with satellites. Warming of the surface has continued apace for several decades, though with some expected squiggling up and down in how fast that is happening.

Greenhouse gas, mainly CO2, causes warming because of its heat trapping properties, and this warming (and the CO2 itself) set in motion a number of feedback systems that either push against warming or increase warming. Most of these feedback systems, unfortunately, are what we call "positive" feedbacks, though they are not "positive" in a good way. They are effects that increase the amount of warming beyond what would happen from just the CO2. One of the biggest global effects is an increase in the amount of water vapor carried by the atmosphere. Since water vapor is also a greenhouse gas, more CO2 -> more greenhouse effect -> more water vapor -> more greenhouse effect.

One of the bad effects of greenhouse warming is the melting of more ice in the Arctic during the summer. On average, less and less ice is left by the end of the melt season in September. Again, this amount squiggles up and down a bit, but it is a persistent downward trend. Since ice reflects sunlight away from the earth, a decrease in ice cover in the Arctic means more warming. This has both regional effects (such as an increase in melting of land-based Greenland glaciers) and a global effect. The regional effect is very important, because this has resulted in a phenomenon known as Arctic Amplification. This refers to the fact that of all the different regions of the earth, the Arctic is warming more than most other regions. The large scale systems of air movement that make up much of our climate, and thus control much of our weather, are shaped and driven in large part by the redistribution of heat form tropical areas (where the sun has a stronger warming effect) outward towards the poles. This redistribution shapes trade wind patterns and determines the location and strength of the jet streams. The relatively warmer Arctic has changed the basic shape and pattern of these major climatic features in ways that have caused significant changes in weather. The drought in California is caused in part by the persistence of a large jet stream meander caused, almost certainly, by Arctic Amplification and other changes in heat distribution in the northern latitudes. Another change is the increase in large scale precipitation events. Here in the twin cities, for example, the frequency of 3" plus rainstorm over the year has changed from about one every two years to one every year, on average. Rainfall events of between 1 and 2 inches, and between 2 and 3 inches, have also increased.

There are two major properties of Arctic ice that should be considered. One, just discussed, is extent. Extent matters because of its direct effect on albedo, the reflection of sunlight back into space. Less ice extent, caused by warming, means even more warming. The other property is ice volume. Ice volume builds up over time. Thick ice includes ice from previous years that didn't melt. The system is complex and dynamic, but a healthy Arctic ice ecosystem has a good amount of thick high-volume ice that persists through the melt season and forms the anchor against which annually re-freezing surface ice forms. The less ice volume, the less stable the Arctic Sea ice is, and the more difficult it becomes to reform. Exactly how this effect works depends on exactly which part of the Arctic one is in.

Over the last several decades, the volume of Arctic Sea ice has reduced by something like 80%. This is not good.

Andy Lee Robinson has made an amazing and highly instructive graphic showing the decline in Arctic Sea ice volume over the years. Here is the most updated version showing data up through this year, based on these data:

From Andy's YouTube page:

Published on Oct 4, 2015

This is an animated visualization of the startling decline of Arctic Sea Ice, showing the minimum volume reached every September since 1979, set on a map of New York with a 10km grid to give an idea of scale. It is clear that the trend of Arctic sea ice decline indicates that it'll be ice-free for an increasingly large part of the year, with consequences for the climate.

The rate of ice loss in the Arctic is staggering. Since 1979, the volume of Summer Arctic sea ice has declined by more than 80% and accelerating faster than scientists believed it would, or even could melt.

Based on the rate of change of volume over the last 30 years, I expect the first ice-free summer day in the Arctic Ocean (defined as having less than 1 million km² of sea ice) to happen between 2016 and 2022, and thereafter occur more regularly with the trend of ice-free duration extending into August and October.

(The music for the graphic was also composed and played by Andy.)

By the way, those interested in computer technology will note that Andy's graphic is produced on the most powerful and stable operating system, Linux, using OpenSource tools.

I produced the animation using hand-written perl and php code to create povray scripts, and scheduling task distribution using MySQL between 7 linux servers working in parallel to render 810 frames at 1920 x 1080 resolution. The "farm" renders 22 frames simultaneously taking between 1-2 hours per frame. On completion, ffmpeg combines the individual frames and music into a high quality mp4 video.

So, that's cool.

Anyway, Andy has also created the now famous Sea Ice Death Spiral graphic, showing Arctic Sea ice volume since 1979, in a particularly helpful graphic style. Notice that the sea ice volume is fairly stable for several years, then starts to decline rapidly and continues to do so thereafter.

Sea ice extent has followed a similar pattern. Let's have a look at this year in relation to the last several decades. First, this graphic made using the interactive graphing tool at the National Snow and Ice Data Center shows this year's ice in relation to the average and standard deviation since 1979. Here we see that the ice extent has been following the lowest end of the two standard deviation spread. The lowest extent shown here is the fourth lowest since records began:

To add even more perspective, the next to graphics show the first ten years in the NSIDC data set, followed by the last ten years. In both cases, the thick black line is the average for the entire data set. This comparison clearly indicates that things have changed in the Arctic:

One of the things that people who wish to deny climate science usually start whinging about at this point in the discussion is that the Antarctic has had an increase in sea ice, and that somehow this all evens out. Let me briefly explain why this is incorrect.

There has been an increase in the extent of sea ice in the Antarctic, but there are at least two (maybe three) reasons for this. First, there has been a major increase in winds in the southern hemisphere caused by climate change. This includes winds coming off the Antarctic continent. These winds break up the sea ice and blow it around, opening areas between blocks of floating ice, which then freeze quickly. This causes an increase in extent of the ice. The other is the increase in fresh water entering the sea around Antarctic because the glaciers are melting. This fresh water allows the sea to freeze at a higher temperature, causing more ice. There may be other reasons having to do with currents of both air and water, and rainfall, also caused by climate change. So, climate change causes these changes in sea ice at both poles.

The increase in maximum sea ice in the Antarctic does not increase albedo because it happens in the dark. So the decreased global albedo in the Arctic is not offset by changes in the Antarctic. All of the regional ecological changes affecting sea life and so on can not be offset between the Arctic and Antarctic, because they are on opposite ends of the planet. Also, note, that this year we did not see an increase in Antarctic sea ice. Overall it is expected that global warming will turn around the Antarctic sea ice amount, and also, we are expecting Antarctic glaciers to begin melting at a higher rate over the next decade or so. It will be interesting to see what eventually happens. In any event, keep in mind that the Arctic and Antarctic are very different geographical regions. The Arctic is a sea surrounded by continents. The Antarctic is a continent surrounded by sea. We could not possibly expect the same things to happen in these two areas. The comparison often made by climate science contrarians is absurd.