General Climate Discussion

[Angus]

clic here. From the beginning year of measurements towards today.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=07&fd=30&fy=1979&sm=07&sd=30&sy=2008
As for the ice, the sattelite images show 2 dimensions, but it so happens that ice has...3.
I have posted a graph that gives a good idea about the thickness.

[Angus]

Oh, and BTW, since we are now in a cooling trend, 2007 was the all-time record

[MORAY37]

Smart or not, still there is about million square kilometers of sea ice more than last year. *clic*

How about we take a look up north....from 88 degrees North Lat.



Ice sure looks thick.

[Angus]

88!!!!!!!!!!!!! Holy cow!
BTW,the sea Ice chart counts 15% as a cover. It may be a good one for sea-travel, but 15% is no cover,and it does not take either thickness nor % cover into account. 15% cover from last year will thereby account equally to 100%  cover that is 10 year old.
The pic shows the same as we are experiencing....reality.

[Holden McGroin]

Smart or not, still there is about million square kilometers of sea ice more than last year. *clic*

This shows that 365 days ago was about 2 million KM^2 below mean and today it is 1.1... 1.2 KM^2 below mean.

That's 800+ thousand KM^2 ice cover that has thicker ice this year than the nonexistant ice of last year.

Of course, this year to last year is not a long enough time frame for anybody to see a trend emerging from the statistical noise.

Of course, neither is 30 years of satelitte photos.  Not when we are talking time scales in the thousands and tens of thousands of years.

[Angus]

Thicker?
Where are there figures of thickness (which go hand-in-hand with age)???????
This is an area measure, and the norm is 15% and above.
What we've been experiencing this year is that the thinner driftice goes much farther than normal. It's lighter, - like lighter objects travel further with the wind.
And there are really nice pockets of ice-free zones now. Oil companies are now venturing into a big-barrel area....
Age of ice graph, upcoming again

[Angus]

And here it is:

[Holden McGroin]

Thicker?
Where are there figures of thickness (which go hand-in-hand with age)???????
This is an area measure, and the norm is 15% and above.
What we've been experiencing this year is that the thinner driftice goes much farther than normal. It's lighter, - like lighter objects travel further with the wind.
And there are really nice pockets of ice-free zones now. Oil companies are now venturing into a big-barrel area....
Age of ice graph, upcoming again

I think I could safely say that on the 800 thousand KM^2 of ice that exists today where there was only liquid water last year, the ice is thicker than last year.

[Angus]

And is it 15% of 800.000 vs water while you have the remaining millions at what percentage and thickness?
Would it so happen that the area is gathering sea ice while land based glaciers are retreating??

Would that than be because of ice from land sliding in, or compleely diffeent climate in the same area?

Or would the area measure as larger do to the block chipping up and scattering?

[Holden McGroin]

And is it 15% of 800.000 vs water while you have the remaining millions at what percentage and thickness?

I think we had this discussed earlier, and there was some discussion as th the precision of the calculated ice mass being less thasn the precision of the measure ice area.

Would it so happen that the area is gathering sea ice while land based glaciers are retreating??

I guess that is what it says.  But we are looking at a short term time frame and what happens this year vs last year is not statistically significant.

Would that then be because of ice from land sliding in, or compleely different climate in the same area?

Once again, we are looking at a short term time frame and what happens this year vs last year is not statistically significant, however, the amount of seasonal sea ice in the Barents Sea doesn't look like it is related to a land based ice flow.

Or would the area measure as larger do to the block chipping up and scattering?

As the sea ice grew during the winter months, I would assume it was due to seawater freezing.

[Angus]

This timeframe is now several hundred years. This "neighbout of mine is now smaller than in the 16th century and retreating very fast.
As for the accuracy of ice thickness, well, it's age and thickness.
But to equal 15% cover with 100% is not a very accurate method.
Ok, here is the neighbour:


All our glaicers are shrinking, every single one, and faster than anticipated. With even no acceleration in melting they will be mostly gone in a humans lifetime, and completely gone in less than 200 years,,,but who knows,,,
BTW, I was there in 1997
and a p.s...These are melting so fast that they don't deliver sea ice, just water.

[Holden McGroin]

Ok, here is my neighbor.

Mount Shasta's glaciers have continued to expand in the past half-century, according to a research paper published last year by Ian M. Howat, then a doctoral student in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of California-Santa Cruz. Four other scientists assisted him in the project.

The study focused on the Whitney and Hotlum glaciers, the two largest on the mountain. The mountain's glaciers are on the southernmost tip of the Cascade Mountain range.

Using historic records stretching back 110 years to create numerical models and comparing photographs taken over the years, the scientists concluded the glaciers have grown at least 30 percent.

What has been proven by the last 2 posts? Yours and mine?... nothing

[Angus]

To put it simple, on this territory, every single glacier is retreating. It is a tough one to belive that the sea is increasingly freezing over right next door, and if you hop further there is massive glacial retreat.
The Greenland Glacier BTW is the second largest on the planet.
BTW, this glacier looks more like a snow covered mountain. How big is it?

[lazs2]

Oh.. thought you said "all of our glaciers are shrinking"   turns out..  you only mean your little corner of the earth. 

It will get colder and then you will be saying it never got this cold this fast.    I can understand how you would buy the hype since it is happening in your little corner of the planet but don't get so shook up..  there has never been ANY weather year that has been just like any other.. every day is some kind of record for some decade or another.

lazs

[Angus]

My little corner includes the biggest glacial area in Europe, including the biggest glacier. The mount picture that Holden posted would probably not qualify properly as a glacier. Here we are working with sheer ice thickness that may be thousands of feet.
Out to sea, we have the sea ice younger, thinner and more scattered.
Moving westwards, it doesn't count as Europe any more. But there is one heck of a block of ice, rapidly retreating, and that one would be the second biggest glacier on earth, a chunk of ice who's thermal energy is more than the whole of the atmosphere over the entire USA. This one is so close that at the best visibility it can be seen from my little corner with the naked eye....well, west-corner that is.
That said, my little corner still has pretty fresh air, so there is no problem at all seeing mountains some 100+ miles away, - they don't blur out, just disappear behind the horizon.
So, to cut a long story short, my little corner is much bigger than you think.....