Does anyone have a difference program that allows us to see the differences more clearly? All of these plots and their color selections makes it difficult. Maybe it is just me!

Reply: If you can find one let me know.

Thanks Brett, hope and assume you will continue with this information.

Just a quickie, have been out of town. My apologies for the helicopter posts (translation, drop in), but no promise not to continue.

Today's news contained this item:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7532435.stm
Canadian Arctic sheds ice chunk
Ice drifts away from the Ward Hunt ice shelf in northern Canada

Extracts in case you don't want to check the link:
"Nearly 20 sq km (eight sq miles) of ice from the Ward Hunt shelf has split away from Ellesmere Island, according to satellite pictures.

It is thought to be the biggest piece of ice shed in the region since 60 sq km of the nearby Ayles Ice Shelf broke away in 2005.
....
The polar north is once again experiencing a rapid ice retreat this year, although many scientists doubt the record minimum extent of 4.13 million sq km (1.59 million sq miles) of sea-ice seen in 2007 will be beaten.
....
Radiocarbon dating of driftwood trapped behind the shelf in Disraeli Fjord shows the shelf itself has been in place for at least 3,000 years.

Researchers believe the mechanism which has maintained its stability - fresh water coming out of Disraeli Fjord and freezing under the shelf - may have been disturbed. If that is the case, the rest of the WHIS may disappear quite rapidly, researchers say.
....
Further loss of Arctic ice will see radiation absorbed by darker seawater and snow-free land, potentially warming the Earth's climate at an even faster rate than current observational data indicates."

Hmmm....
Pacific Decadal Oscillation was in its 'warm phase' starting in 1977 until early-2008.[which is also the same length of the ice extent data].

Read this April that was switching from the warm- phoase to the cool-phase.

What efect does a cool-phase PDO have on the arctic and arctic ice??

Reply: From what I have read, I have not seen any stated relationships between the two. There is still a lot of unknowns about the PDO.

Arctic Oscillation???
"Starting in the 1970s, however, the [Arctic] oscillation has tended to stay in the positive phase, causing lower than normal arctic air pressure and higher than normal temperatures in much of the United States and northern Eurasia."
http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/patterns/arctic_oscillation.html

Is the AO still stuck in the positive phase or that also changed???

Ummm...welll.....looks like God's in his heaven alls right with the arctic.....Duh? i got those media reports somewhere, where are they...where they....something about being ice free by this time...um...can't ever find anything in all this crap on my desk.....

Thanks for that brett,its an excellant site and very clear images,well worth a look up to see how things develope

ww,

Apparently, this chunk of ice that broke off is small potatoes compared to how much has broken off in the last century. 9,000 to 1,000 km^2 in the last 100 years.

From the Globe and Mail:

Huge chunk snaps off storied Arctic ice shelf

Break marks latest in erosion that has whittled 9,000 square kilometres down to 1,000 over past century

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080729.wice29/BNStory/National/home

Look up John Franklin and Roald Amundsen if you want human history on the condition of the arctic,sometimes cold sometime warm,whats new?

Cryosphere today showing that since July 28 ice is THICKENING and extending so don't be surprised in NH above anomaly year 2009

Reply: I don't see that. It looks like it is still decreasing as it should be this time of year.

What bugs me is how long it has taken the ice to melt out of Hudson's Bay. Hudson's Bay is shallow and to some degree cut off from major Atlantic currents. The fact the ice has lasted so long seems to me like a sign that the North is feeling the chill of the turned-down sun.

The rest of the Arctic is still liable to be responding to the warm past, both in terms of the solar warmth and the warm AMO. The Atlantic "remembers" recent warming, and that warmth is still flushing out the ice, even as the turned-down sun attempts to grow new ice.

The clash between the ocean, which "remembers" recent warmth, and growing cold caused by the dimming sun (and perhaps PDO factors,) will likely brew up some wild weather.

The last time the Atlantic was warm as the climate cooled was the 1950's. New England had quite a number of hurricanes, and also a mile-wide tornado, likely at least an F-4 if not an F-5.

We recently had a F-2 tornado cut south to north through eastern New Hampshire, and rather than remembering the 1950's, there has been the usual blaming of SUV's.

I don't see how we are to learn from the past if we don't remember it. However, in the end, it doesn't matter if you learn from the past, or blame SUV's. If you live in New England, be prepared for hurricanes. And remember that history tells of New England hurricanes which blew down half the trees.

Think of that as you drive to work. Look at the trees by the road, and then look at the wires by the road. Imagine 50% of the trees are down. It will mean 100% of the wires are down. Become thoughtful. Think of how it make take more than an hour or two to get the wires back up.

It makes for an interesting drive to work, whether you are driving an SUV or an electric golf-cart. And thoughtful people will prepare.

Alec: Based on a number of studies, including the original one in which they calculated the PDO for the first time, the PDO is dependent on ENSO for its signal, not vice versa. If you were to plot monthly NINO3.4 and PDO data on the same graph for 100 to 150 years, you'd see the correlation between the two.

With that in mind, if the PDO remains negative for an extended period of time, as some predict, there should be fewer El Ninos, which is important to the Arctic warming. El Ninos are known to cause anomalously high Arctic temperatures. It even appears that the 97/98 El Nino caused a step change in Arctic temperatures, raising them to current levels. Unfortunately, there is no mention of the reverse effect in any paper or blog discussion I can find. Will the Arctic cool if there are fewer El Ninos? Hopefully. I covered that in a recent blogspot post. Click on my name.

If you find anything on La Ninas causing excessive cooling in the Arctic, I'd like to hear about it.

The decreases in North Atlantic and North Pacific SSTs will also help if they continue.

Regards

Weather Watcher:While looking at the pictures I could not believe the result. Although there is some ice loss in the western part of Alaska, to my surprise the first photograph shows that the center today is more dense then the earlier photographs. I went down stairs to my old darkroom and got three magenta filters to see exactly what was going on. My son tested it, and then I did, and the first photograph we agreed was the denser of the four photographs in the center of the arctic. So chalk this one up for cooling.WOW!
KIPP

Hi Brett,

When comparing to previous years, it is wrong to compare 07/29/08 against 07/29/07 and 07/29/06. The reason is that this year is a leap year, and there was one extra day in this year. You should be comparing 07/29/08 agains 7/30/07 and 7/30/06. At climateaudit.org, we have been having good thread on watching how the sea ice extent has retreated this year compared to previous years, and we observe the leap year extra day.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/

Weatherwatcher,

Of course the rest of the article pointed out that the ice sheet has been in the process of breaking up since the late 19th century.

There is more ice than normal in other locations in the Arctic http://www.barentsobserver.com/?cat=16149&id=4498513

Last summer, Patrick Henry posted about Greenland every single day. This summer, we've heard nothing about Greenland. I'm sure this has to do with the fact that Greenland has been warm this summer.

The West was quite warm during July. Denver was nearly 4 degrees above average. They'll be above 100 on Saturday. It's no wonder why we haven't gotten any Colorado backyard weather reports, either.

Alaska has been quite cold, so that's the one cherry PH has been picking on all summer.

Gotta love how some people just look for outliers to support their preconceived notions and their political agenda.

Looks pretty icy to me! Wasn't there some glo-BULL warming exploration/expedition from either Russia or Britian that had their boat stuck in the north polar ice? I wonder if they are still up there. The fools.

By the by, Brett, welcome back. How was vacation? (Reply: It was nice, Played my best golf ever.) I see by the extended forecast that the dog days of August are going to pretty much be non-existant. As I am off work on the 13th, 14th, and 15th, I am not amused. And so much for that huge heat wave for this weekend that was predicted earlier in the week. (I will say this though. I have to admit, this summer in the Northeast has been far better than last summer when we had those 50 degree mornings and 70 degree rainy afternoons.)

Extended forecasts. Proof that Glo-BULL Warming is a CROCK!!!!!!

The transpolar drift has been in reverse (east to west) in recent weeks, creating tensile stress along the north coast of Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/DriftTrackMap.html

Not surprising that the ice separated from the land in those regions.

Kipp: "chalk one up to cooling"....Duh?...did it occur to you that this is simply normal climate variations and has nothing specifically to 'heating/cooling' other than natural cycles? you can go back hundreds of years and find these same variations and pronounced at times and less pronounced at others...just remember, your hysteric friends have already went out on a limb regards the arctic sea ice melting this summer....

weather watcher: big chunks break off all the time....ho hum...also the movement of the ice causes massive pressure ridges that then pull apart as the currents underneath that ice assert their dominance....those currents are always there regardless of the ice thickness....

August 1, and it appears that Santa's ice skating pond is freezing over - after a long hot summer where it occasionally got above freezing.
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/latest/noaa1.jpg

Soon the kiddies can go back to school and learn that they and everyone else in their country is responsible for melting the polar ice caps, drowning poor people, and killing the polar bears and penguins.

And later everyone will wonder why there is so much violent anti-social behavior amongst young people.

Steve Rowland:Natural variations came to a close around the beginning of the anthropocene. So I was surprised. The only thing unlike deniers, not skeptics, I was being honest and fairminded. It is not natural for the temperatures to rise at the pace it has, nor the amount of carbon, as the two mirror each other. Natural cycles are for High School. How about the loss of biomass, and ocean sinks becoming 1(power of ten) more acidic.
Read along, don't waste energy, and please don't litter;here anymore.OH! AGW is real, much more then a dinosaur called natural carbon cycles.
KIPP

Weather Watcher:Thanks for your last post. Very informative.A thought about to your last remarks. Scientists are very worried about the outlying perma frost because there is a lot of methane and CO2 beneath it. They drill through the thin Ice and light a match, to see the flames explode because of the methane there. It is just the snow ball effect. To think that George Bush wan'ts more drilling for oil is crazy. Only Humanity is at stake!
KIPP

Another update about Denver: Today hit 104 degrees, which is only a degree shy of their all-time record high, and they have broken their all-time record for most consecutive 90-degree days at 20

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=bou&storyid=16924&source=0

No wonder why we haven't had any reports about local ski conditions.

To: Brett and Bob Tisdale:

Thank you for your replies.

Looking at the data for the 1997-8 El Nino, it was extreme. Compared to the other El Ninos, it is almost as if someone turned the 'burners' under the oceans on HIGH during March-April-May-June 1997!!!

http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml

Hi Mark,

The ski season ended about a month later than normal this year in May. We don't usually discuss skiing much in the summertime, and it is August now.

The NOAA hysterics are hilarious. This summer has been really pleasant - with much cooler nights than the last two hot summers. We haven't had to turn the air conditioner on at all this year, as temperatures have been getting down to 60 or below every night. In fact, with the window fan on we have had to use extra blankets to keep warm at night.

Did you read the data in the NOAA article you linked to?

The 105 degree record was set both in August 1878 and again in July 2005.

We have now tallied 37 ninety degree days so far in 2008 (through August 1st). So far, 2008 is only 13 days away from the 10th top seasonal total of 50 set in both 1960 and 1964.

In other words, 1960 and 1964 had 40% more 90 degree days than 2008. Scary trend?

The official records of the last two weeks weather, generated by the Colorado State Climatologist at CSU
http://ccc.atmos.colostate.edu/~autowx/fclwx_plotsearch.php?graph=1&span=20&station=FCLWX&year=2008&month=07&day=31&dimensions=2

Absolutely gorgeous weather along the Front Range. Cool nights and beautiful warm afternoons.

Gotta love how some people just look for outliers to support their preconceived notions and their political agenda.

REPLY: Make, Model, Year and Size of Engine, Mr. "I'm not about politics." Quit stalling and let's have it.

And since Brett didn't post my response to your "Chevy" bashing post in the open forum, I will respond here. I too owned a 1999 Cavalier. Solid from the day I bought it from the day I sold it to my significant other. Even drove it to the beach last summer for some glo-BULL warming! Probably it's last long road trip ever. How do you l