Going by the pattern that two years before a prediction looks like it won't come true it is changed, then in 2014 there will be a new, new prediction of about 2020. Etcetera, etc.
Besides, there are plenty of other predictions which cover basically every year at some point. So if Arctic sea ice does every disappear in the summer, somebody will be right. In climate science, that's called being thorough.
It's there for the same reason that a block of ice in your kitchen would takes several days to melt, even in the summer. Even if it is surrounded by warmer air,, it takes about 80 g to melt a gram of ice and it takes a while for the energy to be transferred to do so, depending on the temperature of the surrounding air.. There was about 16,000 km3 of ice in the Arctic in 1979, and each year some of it is melted and little less frozen back, until today there is only about 4600 cubic kilometers of ice. I'll let you do the math to figure out how much energy must be transferred from the atmosphere to the ice to melt that much, when you consider that the average temperature of the Arctic region is about 1°C. Although it is normal for some of the Arctic ice to melt each summer and freeze back each winter, one of the real worries of climate scientists is that the permanent ice that has been around for millions of years is starting to melt.
The article below has the data on the Arctic sea ice as well as pictures which show that about 30 to 40% of the Arctic sea ice has disappeared since 1979.
Yes your jumping the gun they say summer of 2013, (wont happen) they also said ,62nd UN general assembly July 2008 that there would be 50 million climate refugees by 2010 ( they later changed that to 2020)
"Why is that?"
Because neither the physics nor the statistics supported a projection of 2013 as being an ice-free summer, not now and not in 2007. That particular summer was a perfect storm for ice loss, and average ice thickness was still relatively high (contrasted to what it's at now).
It would be interesting to actually see their modeling studies, because the models shown in both AR4 and the leaked SOD of AR5 predict at earliest ice-free conditions by 2035. AR4 actually had a mean ensemble of somewhere near 2070 or further - it was a ridiculous projection, was conservative then and the new models are conservative now.
Continuing an exponential curve we'll see at least a day of ice-free conditions in the Arctic by 2016; quadratic curve predicts 2017. 2013 was just as ridiculous to predict as 2030+, and I would challenge you to find where that was actually the accepted projection of any authoritative body.
"Am I jumping the gun a little and should I wait for July or August? "
To be as fair to the projection as possible, you should wait for the minimum, which will occur in September (but you might be able to see if it'll hit zero by July/August). I would be quite shocked if we did hit zero.
I would probably similarly be shocked if we hit the "effective" ice-free levels too, 1 million square kilometers of ice cover. Such a drop is feasible, but we would need weather that is adversarial to ice cover for that to happen.
The Arctic ice will not disappear anytime soon. It is however disappearing more and more each summer and within the next 5-10 years the summer ice will be gone over enough of the ocean to allow shipping through year round.
I don't believe the Arctic ice will be gone in this century but will be in the next.
Might take a couple decades before summertime is totally ice-free, but there'll only be a light layer of ice during the winter months. Last couple of decades have shown both smaller overall area and thinner cap pretty much year-to-year. And, jee-whiz, the only good news is that the corporations can save money on shipping costs - which trickle-downwise, means we get a half-penny savings! Whoa... I don't think that's a good trade-off when all this warmin' up is causing water wars, droughts, higher prices for foods, diseased forests, coastal erosion, loss of habitat north-south-east-west, rise in mosquito-borne diseases, flooding all around the world, stronger storms and hurricanes and the great damage they cause. Dang, this list is getting serious, and I'm not even a specialist in it!
The Health of the Arctic sea Ice is not as grim as you might think, it is clear that there has been an alarming trend in Northern Sea Ice over the last 3 decades, some of that is associated with Polar Vortex Anomalies which causes periods of increased storm activity that break up the summer sea ice. If One year enough blue ice (3 year or older) covers enough surface area you could see a rapid recovery of sea ice if the polar vortex goes through a period of stability. However if the Red Line in this graph does not start going up in a few years there will be almost no Ice at the North Pole during summer. But it will always refreeze (Green Line). We do not know too much about Northern Sea Ice behaviour during the PDO Cool Phase but we do know that over the last few centuries there have been numerous historical accountings of unusually low sea ice that was clearly part of a natural cycle. Obviously coating the Ice Cap with black carbon can't be good, but all of this could be very natural.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/sate...
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The Arctic ice cap will be gone by 2030 and the Antarctic ice cap will be gone by 2150.
We know that energy can be transformed but can't be created or destroyed and that heat can't, on its own, flow from a colder to a hotter location...we also know that over time, differences in temperature, pressure and chemical processes tend to even out, but that the lower temperatures are, the longer it takes for those differences to reach a state of equilibrium, or what science calls entropy.
So having this information at hand tells us a lot about why the Arctic ice cap is still there. However, translating this information into an explanation of why the cap still exists is more difficult because weather is not linear-you can see in this very simple explanation of how energy is transformed that there are variables in the information we have-differences in temperature, pressure and chemical processes influence the process and that takes time.
Now I'm no scientist-but like many people, I have this basic information about energy that I learned in High School. That information tells me that when someone says that weather is 'chaotic' this means it is difficult to put other information into context to provide knowledge. But science can, knowing certain things related to the basic information available to them, assemble a subset of possibilities and determine the statistical probability of something occurring. This is not knowledge, either-but the ability to assemble those subsets into statistical probability is.
As individuals, the general public takes the very basic information that they learn in early education-some more successfully than others-but we want to think in a more linear fashion. So when science says one of the more likely scenarios based on knowledge of how this basic information all fits together is that the Arctic could be ice-free in 2013 we want to apply that literally; it's 2013, so the ice is supposed to be gone, you guys said it would be. We're also impatient; ten years to us is a long time, although as we get older our measure of time changes, but we want to take our literal interpretation of statistical probability to the extreme; it's 2013, you guys said the Arctic was supposed to be ice free in 2013 and here it is January 25 already, so what gives?
Well, you know, what they said was if the variables of X,Y and Z happen in these amounts, the outcome will be this; if those variables happen in other amounts, the outcome will be something else, and then as more information is assembled they can narrow in on the probability of any particular outcome occurring. We don't like that, and we don't like one group of scientists disagreeing with another about how those variables are going to influence the basic information we understand about entropy and how it affects climate. We want absolute information in simple terms, and if we cannot get it we get absolute in our opinions about what should be occurring, and we don't trust all the weird symbols and language science uses, like X, Y and Z in parentheses connected by mathematical stuff because we don't have the knowledge needed to interpret the information that is right before our eyes.
The question I have, and what it all boils down to, is do we have enough information to make a reasonable decision about what to do about climate change and if what we do will make a difference; if so, when? That's the difference between information and knowledge, which goes to the heart of your question based on the foundation of simple information that we have known since...hmmm, probably 1870 or thereabouts. I wish I knew more about what to do with that information but don't pretend that my being familiar with it represents knowledge and am trying to build on it without allowing my experience to influence me into an absolutist view...on reflection, you might feel the same way.
EDIT: Apparently there are at least two people out there who don't know how to interpret the laws of thermodynamics and statistical probability. I wonder who that might be this morning...
Do you actually look at your links? In the BBC article there is one guy saying 2013, and a lot more people saying it will be later than that...and it's supposed to be ice-free in SUMMER, anyway--this is WINTER.
Are you being intentionally stupid?
EDIT for Ian: You're such a liar, you block all the "alarmists" from answering your questions or even contacting you, then claim that "they" weasel out of things.
According to a professor in eSkeptic magazine about a year ago, a student told him he flew over the pole and the ice was already gone. I guess skepticism chooses what it wants to be skeptical about.
Well it's 2013 and the Arctic ice-cap is still there. Why is that?
Am I jumping the gun a little and should I wait for July or August?
Will they be gone by then, it's definitely this year?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7139797.stm
http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/arctic-ice-free-by-2013.html
Wake me up in 2113 if it is still there. Just because someone may have underestimated the time it would take for the ice cap to disappear, doesn't mean that it will never disappear.
Because global warming will never affect humans but stupidity will.
I think the best thing about predictions made by climate science is that you can pick and choose which ones you like and which ones you don't and find peer reviewed documents that support whichever position you decide to take.
If I showed you photos of former glaciers would that help?
it was 9 friggin degrees here yesterday .
To be fair we should wait till 2013 and then laugh at all the excuses from the alarmists as to why it didn't happen :-D
"We know everything about climate and climate models are always right. But climatology is also in its infancy and the climate models are mostly wrong. We were totally wrong, which makes us totally right. Are deniers that stupid they can't figure that out?"
@Sagebrush...I've made bets with an alarmist in the past and they always weasel out of it so that's pointless.
"Uhhh...well, all the heat went missing in the uh... deep ocean where we can\t measure it. Yeah, that's it. That's the ticket. We can't measure the heat in the deep ocean so uh... I declare myself the winner. Yeah, that's it. I actually win. That's the ticket."
Well they did say 'during the summers'. However, maybe we should make book on this subject. I think we could make a killing. Only greenies never use their own money.
But don't you think we should at least give them the opportunity to put their money where there mouth is? Any takers?
it hasn't melted.
now give me my 10 points
