It occurs to me that if Roald Amundsen was able to navigate the Northwest Passage in c1906, what's the big deal about it being open now?

Also, I notice that the North Pole is not quite ice free.

Interesting how the arctic sea ice continues to retreat at record rates despite La Nina conditions of earlier in the year and Solar Activity at an extended minimum.

Blows a wide hole in the silly arguments of the more vocal skeptics.

In other words, this illustrates how climate change is continuing to progress.

The Northern Hemisphere is very sensative to changes in atmospheric CO2 levels. The green house gas effect warming has dramatically reduced the extent of seasonal snow cover in the spring and summer. This is a feedback mechanism that provides more warming than from just the increase in CO2 alone.

Now we are seeing how this is beginning to thin the sea ice and is allowing it to melt much faster in the summer. In time, the extent of sea ice in the spring will be at record low levels, allowing the ocean to absorb more heat by not reflecting as much solar radiation.

The direct impact on climate of sea ice changes has so far been minimal compared to what it will be in the future. Stay tuned in for more warming in the future.

Any there any way we could look at the data graphically for the last 30 years?

One graph showing all the years stacked upon 1 yearly cycle so we could see the overall range of the yearly ice melt/accummulation?

Another continous graph starting 30 years ago and ending now that way long term trends could be observed?

Obviously the passages were free of ice at one time or the passages would have never been found!

Just the thought that maybe one day this will be a steady shipping route through the summer months really scares the crap out of me.Imagine all that could go wrong.Oil spills,ship wrecks and increased human population along this route will put stress on the very sensitive arctic ecosystem.
Also a vast wilderness will be lost.And before you know it they'll be asking for a Tim Hortons and a Casino along the route.

Be careful with the use of extent & coverage since the two are very different beasts. Note the graph shows ice extent with " at least 15 % ice coverage " ... in other words it can be 85 % open ocean & be included on this plot. That leads to potentially big swings if the wind blows the ice flows together.
I always thought the ice quantity should have a " skate on it cutoff " ... in other words if you can't play with a puck on it, it ain't real ice.
Just some common sense from the great white north.
I have also included a quote from John Daly's website that is one of my favs but I haven't checked it for authenticity.

"It will without doubt have come to your Lordship's knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated.

(This) affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations."
President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817 [13]

Canada's dreams are coming true and they can now be a maritime power as they control cross-continental shipping for the northern hemisphere for about 10 days a decade. If only they would have had the technology available for them to have discovered this 300 years ago. Congrats. We Americans directly south of you are envious.

I alway thought that ice breaker ships were used to keep the passageway open.

Therefore , wouldnt the ice in that area be thinner because a slim passage is kept open?

This article is of interest Ice Breaker stranded on ice http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/cold-irony-arctic-sea-ice-traps-climate-tour-icebreaker/

andrew,

dude, you really are into the doom and gloom, mass hysteria eh, bro?...arctic ice extent is greater this year than last year with more co2, but because of something NATURAL like la nina or solar minima, thats why all the polar bears didnt drown...typical AGW style spin, whereby a yearover increase in arctic ice is explained by something natural reasoned into an AGW feedback...shame, shame!!!...i was curious bro, have you heard about the broken hockey stick, yet?...have a nice day, dudes!!!

Andrew: You know better than that. Many things influence Arctic ice extent, including temperature, the Arctic Oscillation, the direction of sea currents, age of ice, prior year snowfall, etc.

With respect to your La Nina comment, is the impact of a La Nina on Arctic temperature the opposite of an El Nino? Please provide the title of a paper that confirms that. I've looked for years, but never found one.

Also, the reason the Northern Hemisphere warms faster than the Southern has nothing to do with CO2. Please. We aren't fools here.

Marco:
You crack me up! Not just casinos. How about a McDonald's, Burger King, and a home for people that believe in Global Cooling. Patrick!ET Al. It ain't getting colder in the arctic. the Philippines or in other equatorial regions. The B.S. is over as AGW exists and is progressing under our very noses.
Andrew:
Great observation. Over the last one hundred and fifty years, it has become warmer at a faster rate then the last six hundred thousand years.They deny global warming, so when does the
cooling period begin. In about six hundred years if we stop sending GHG's into the atmosphere. I'm waiting for the methane from the bogs to be released.One more degree, and it joins in the cataclysmic conclusion of our species. If CO2 follows temperatures as in the keeling curve, and CO2 is doubled, forget about it! If you don't believe in the global warming thing, take a bottle of club soda and stick it in the heat for an hour, then open it. This is our atmosphere. This warming has already nullified the La Nina event, the recent fifty year cooling period, and the Pacific decadal oscillations. Where is it getting colder. I'm Back!!
KIPP

Paul,

It occurs to me that if Roald Amundsen was able to navigate the Northwest Passage in c1906, what's the big deal about it being open now?

The difference between 1906 and 2007 (and perhaps soon 2008) is that in 1906 the Northwest Passage was navigable, but not ice-free. I'd wager that there's been some route through the Northwest Passage with little or thin enough ice to traverse the passage for more than just the past two summers, but until last August it has never been known to be entirely ice-free.

Also, the route Amundsen took from 1903-1906 was a more southerly route that did not pass through what is today considered the main route through the Northwest Passage; he did not pass through Parry Strait and McClure Passage which form the main route to the north (see the map Brett posted). When NSIDC talks about an ice-free Northwest Passage, they are talking about that more northerly route.

They do this in part because of shipping interests. Large ocean vessels cannot traverse the southerly route taken by Amundsen; it's too narrow and too shallow for large cargo ships to pass through.

sure looks different here (not opening up)
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/CT/animate.arctic.some.0.html

sammy k,
are you saying that global average temperatures are not rise?

Are you saying they are but but not due to a rise in CO2. Do you believe that CO2 is rising?

Just not sure what data you are looking at...

Kipp,

Things are not so bad. Amundsen lived in the good old days and he could do it. Take a breath, calm your self and say;

"Amundsen could do it and so can we!"

You see, we're back in the good old days. Your burden is lifted.

.. your welcome.

Hi Guys,

The funniest thing about the mean sea ice extent is that is starts at the PDO positive flip, so the mean is stated during a PDO positive and not the mean for a positive and negative. With only one set of data you cannot say this is below average. You only have half of one cycle when you should have at least ten cycles otherwise the standard deviation is huge. You can claim anything. Did anyone catch that. 30 years of satellite ice data is good enough for a tread but 30 years of satellite temperature data is not. Go figure.

Bob Tisdale: In all of your posts you support global warming. Have you changed your mind? I am talking about your posts on many other blog's than this.
If changing climate causes the natural world to slow down its carbon uptake, or even begin to release carbon, that would exacerbate the climate forcing from fossil fuels: a positive feedback.
Stratification of the waters in the ocean, due to warming at the surface for example, opposes CO2 diffusion and absorption, by slowing the rate of replenishing surface waters by deep waters which haven't taken up fossil fuel CO2 yet. Yes warming by one degree would cause irreversable damage. The acidification of the oceans and a change in the pH would also cause a loss of forty percent of all species in the Oceans.
KIPP

Kipp 7:27 PM

You should go over on Meteorological Madness blog on this site and see what he is saying about the potential winter in the East.

From his blog:
*Another aspect that gives me the right to think that this will be a cold winter is the amount of cold arctic air that is already building up in the arctic.*

Hope he's wrong.

just for the record as a skeptic (to prove we ain't biased) the artic melt ice trend now is similar to 2007 so AGW's may be right. However I predict its going to re-freeze pretty soon..
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
The global temps are now falling pretty major
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
600 mb

so we shall see.....

Brett: Thanks for your recent topics. They have been fair, balanced and timely. You have made this the best blog on the world wide web.

(Reply: Kipp, I think you are a bit too generous with that statement, but I thank you for your nice comment.)

Best Regards, Kipp

Andrew: "Interesting how the arctic sea ice continues to retreat at record rates despite La Nina conditions of earlier in the year and Solar Activity at an extended minimum.
Blows a wide hole in the silly arguments of the more vocal skeptics."

Skeptics of what? Oh, I guess you mean skeptics of the extreme positive feedback from higher CO2 conentration, which let the temperature increase from CO2 gets 3 to 5 times higher than the actual temperature effect from increased GHG induced radiation because of CO2 (at 560ppm ~1 degree C). That's what the CO2 alarm is all about.

Well. Let us say you are right. I that case, let's see what science tells us about the reason for ice melting on the Artctic sea. They (NSIDC) say this is driven by winds and unusual pattern of transportation och air between different altitudes, and also changes for this area in the thermohaline circulation of course, and AMO.

We can compare our days with these of Amundsen 100 years ago, which were quite similar, or the days of the vikings, 1000 years ago, which was -- also on a global scale -- a lot warmer than today. Already in the 14th century there are reports of an almost ice free Arctic sea.

So what is the scientific support that the change in arctic ice cover today is caused by changes of the small GHG CO2?

Now don't attack me as a skeptic, just answer me.

South winds driving warmer air and water northward?

My goodness what will these scientists "Discover"
next????

Kipp Alpert: Please provide a reference for this statement, "Over the last one hundred and fifty years, it has become warmer at a faster rate then the last six hundred thousand years."

And a reference for this one too: "I'm waiting for the methane from the bogs to be released. One more degree, and it joins in the cataclysmic conclusion of our species."

Another interesting statement by you: "This warming has already nullified...the recent fifty year cooling period..."

What recent fifty-year cooling period?

You continue, "...and the Pacific decadal oscillations." Please provide a link to a peer-reviewed paper that states the PDO causes global temperature to rise or fall. Cause and effect, that type of paper.

Yes, you are back. You're back making alarmist claims that in some instances contradict the real world.

Andrew,

If you check back through the archives to around a year ago you will note the topics of La Nina conditions and Solar Activity were raised, as possible explanation for milder temperatures at the North Pole. Also the current phase of the AMO was mentioned.

At that time Alarmists gave links to Realclimate, and the arguments were that the sun has very little effect, the La Nina has very little effect, and the phase of the AMO has very little effect. CO2 was the main driver.

I seem to notice a shift in these arguments, over the past year. Now it seems that, well, yes, the sun does have an effect, the La Nina does have an effect, and the phase of the AMO does have an effect.

You will notice the sentences of Alarmists begin, "Despite these effects..."

It may seem like a small thing, but, considering it was difficult to even get an Alarmist to talk about the sun or cycles a year ago, it seems to me Skeptics have won a pretty big concession.

Kipp,

I assume you are using the debunked "Hockey Stick" data, when you state, "Over the last one hundred and fifty years, it has become warmer at a faster rate then the last six hundred thousand years."

I assume you are ignoring the "trend" of the past decade. Also you are ignoring some fairly obvious things regarding how warm it was in the past.

Even before I started questioning the Hockey Stick graph, there were things that puzzled me. For example, how the heck did the Vikings dig their graveyards in Greenland, if it wasn't warmer? Those graveyards are now permafrost. Have you ever tried to dig frozen earth? All I could think was that the Vikings must have had light-sabers rather than swords, to plant their dearly departed six feet under.

The current warming has caused glaciers to retreat, but in the Alps the retreat uncovers Roman tin mines, and Greenland it uncovers the stumps of trees which grew in the MWP. In other words, the warmth is not "unprecedented." Therefore, when you speak of the "rate of warming," it is actually a downward line, if you start in Roman times or during the MWP.

Kipp,

AGW still has not been PROVEN to exist.

Faster than ever? says you?
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_2000_yrs.html

I see lows and highs, with the temperature changing fast all the time.

We are in an interglacial period...generally these last arount 10-12,000 years. Ice core data says we've had and exceptionally stable period...temperature has not spikes as high as the previous 4 interglacial periods, allowing humans to flourish.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html

We're due to go back to an iceage...

Thank God for global warming or my house