He knows why, but doesn't know why he knows why....

He could be right, but good science would say before proclaiming something like that, he should know the mechanics.

While perhaps very accurate data, I question whether a 6 year study of any climate phenomena confirms anything other than the need to study long term changes for periods longer than 6 years. As dear old dad used to say " figures don't lie but liars figure ".
Have a great weekend folks.

I don't get it.

First he makes a definite statement and lays blame:
"According to Haas, the observed thinning 'IS' a signal of climate change,"

Then he says no one knows how it happened:
"but he notes it is still unclear what the underlying mechanisms are."

If you don't know what the 'underlying mechanisms' are,
how in this world can you be sure of what caused it?

.....over several seasons has shown that sea ice in the Arctic has thinned up to 53% from 2001-2007

Is this not old news?

Is this previous event why the experts predicted the disappearance of ice at the artic?

To the best of my knowledge this has not yet occured.............soooooooooooooooo why rehash old news that is by no means a trend ........or as the alarmists say "weather is not climate" when it does not suit their purpose.

Puleeze lets try to stay on topic and forget the fear mongering!

Here's a preposterous and fictitious climate catastrophe claim and logic progression that to me seem comparable to those used by climate alarmists to illustrate AGW.

The increased number of icebreakers bearing researchers and sightseers has created a substantial decrease in sea ice extent. More icebreakers to investigate loss of sea ice = more broken ice = more exposed sea ice surface area = faster melting of ice = less sea ice = more icebreakers to investigate loss of sea ice = more broken ice = more, more, more... With the positive feedback, we'll soon reach a tipping point.

Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?

Looks like all the ice is heading for the south pole!

very interesting.i dont believe in man made global warming.but if that ice dont thicken soon i reckon we have a lot of spoofing to do to ward off the warmist gang.

Bob, you might have a point there. All those ice breakers probably do have some effect!

Also I wouldn't put it past the Russians to be up to something that's affecting the ice cover. They are after controlling as much oil resources as possible.

Humans just love barging in and stomping on nature.

saly, I agree with you!

If these guys can make their minds up about climate change observations they cant expect the general public to be sure of anything or know what the hell is going down (apart from we know the ice is going down).

Bob Tisdale says:

"The increased number of icebreakers bearing researchers and sightseers has created a substantial decrease in sea ice extent."

Please explain how a few ships can cause the breakup and melting of about 4 million square miles of ice (the difference between average loss and 2007 loss).

Is this really the best conspiracy theory you can come up with?

With near record (and it is getting nearer every day) ice melt!
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png

Saly: You have the PDO,the AO,The AMO,El Nino, less reflectivity of IR, thus more absorption, and you can consider Global Warming,the sun, wind and water circulation, then you might get a clue,why this melting is going on. Look at Mr. Tisdale's analysis.
KIPP

paulm:AGW Deniers don't have any understanding of the mechanisms involved. What is there climate science read. Or perhaps that they just are good at rejecting facts and fiction. And so there is Rush Limbaugh. "The chain of cause and effect here is so brutally simple that it is difficult to see how the Global Climate Coalition can deny it. The fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas is not in dispute. And the fact that carbon dioxide is being poured into the atmosphere by hundreds of millions of cars and hundreds of thousands of city power plants is also not in dispute. In 1950, these sources poured 1.6 billion tons of carbon into the air worldwide; by 1991, they were pumping about 6 billion tons into the air. And this has been accompanied by all the above signs of a growing heat wave. It is a testimony to the greed of corporate special interests that they would even try to rationalize these facts away. ugh.
KIPP

Ok so the ice is thinning, perhaps. Unfortunately it does not thin uniformly. The planet has been warming and the artic ice has reduced somewhat since the mid 50's. It is not helpful unless you can say why.

So hopefully Hass et al are at the beginning of their research. If not this has been another huge waste of taxpayer's money. Sad.

why such a big concern on the part of the agw crowd if wth arctic is ice free. if ice and snow were disappearing from both poles equally i would be concerned but thats not whats going on.
we are seeing some type of nh event being countered by the opposite event in the sh. i like to think its related to earths axis and tilt but any way whats wron with the north pole being ice free 4-5 months a year
1. shipping would become more economical and less poluting than equatorial routes
2. yes better access to fossil fuels and by the way great post by randy in open forum. fossil fuels and nuclear power are will only be used for a short time in the history of the planet as ultimately solar and who knows what other type of star trek energy sources are yet to be discovered
3. i for one would love to take a crise ship trip through the area and see nature at its best
4. and if it happens to come to it id be more than happy to stop at a mcdonalds for a cod or lobster roll(locale special) while im in the area

to repeat gore in 40 minutes more solar energy hits the planets surface than mankind uses in one year thats 13150 times mans energy output

Well, I believe in AGW and I know that the sun is unusually hot to my skin. The two are not mutually exclusive!

GettingWarm: If you had read the first sentence of my post, you would have seen the two words preposterous and fictitious and realize it was satire. But obviously to some that wasn't clear. FYI, preposterous means absurd or outlandish, while fictitious implies fabrication. I will apologize for not using simpler words. Its intent was to illustrate how ridiculous it looks to use positive feedback as an initiator of catastrophic tipping points.

Thanks for allowing me to reemphasize the silliness of an alarmist concept and for reinforcing one of my beliefs about AGW proponents.

Have a nice day.

How nice that they can make such accurate long range predictions.

By the way, earlier this spring, new data obtained by Hass indicated that there would not be a new record minimum ice coverage this year.

And Patrick Henry predicted it last year based on his review of the data. So?

In the meantime, I'm sitting here waiting for Fay (according to the official statements) with my 4-8 inches of rainfall on me, right? Wait a darned minute, ever since I started looking at the 11AM EDT update, there has been a growing divergence between official position and the actual circulation center, along with speed and direction of movement (constantly west @ 6-8mph).

Supposedly Fay is east of me, just a couple of counties over. The circulation is north of me, again a couple of counties away. Direction of motion since 11AM has been sharply resembling a 300-315 degree heading, not the official 270-280 degree heading. Speed of motion has been consistent all day, but between the last two official position reports, the slowest Fay could be moving is 10mph, but it would be more like 15mph. The center of circulation is lifting out even faster. I should be getting 25+ mph winds now, instead, light and variable, nothing over 7mph(local monitoring station, a few miles away had a 32mph gust this morning).

So, maybe we get some of that rain predicted in a couple of days, but the first half the drenching Fay has become a bit over an inch of rain. Great rain, don't get me wrong, it has been misting all day long, the plants and my garden will love it.

SO, why the nice storm report? Because with clear evidence that a layman could look at online and follow, the official reports still clung (and are still clinging) to their model predictions, not reality on the ground. Which is what AGW/AGCC has to cling too also.

Just like the difference here between models and reality, the Arctic ice frenzy is all over models vs. reality. By the models, we should have already been baked and the Arctic ice free months ago. PH was ranted at by the AGW fundies for predicting something different. Soooo, as reality started beating the AGW fundies in the head, you backtracked.

Bob Tisdale's theory above make more sense than anything from an AGWer. If nothing else, it can actually be stated and potentially falsified using hard science.

Kipp, I do not need you, of all people, to tell me to get a clue.

"Kipp Alpert:
Saly: then you might get a clue,"

The guy said what he said and contradicted himself.

Thor:
In fact the sun is getting brighter now because we are reducing aerosols, but we have not reduced CO2. I try to explain to deniers these answers and they don't know what it is, except they can't see that things can happen independent of warming or cooling. Even Mr. Tisdale who believes that El Nino may be the answer hasn't addressed Global Warming. But even scientists can have a personal gripe. I don't even want to here Hansen's name again. These things are psychologies used to dismiss the main facts of global warming. There are traps set for people who just believe in a proven fact, but go against their political agenda or personal grievance. The truth works just fine for me.
Thanks,KIPP

oh oh....the sky's falling...maybe...

At top of Greenland, new worrisome cracks in ice
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5haFo02rnjDwdXudd0xvERQuTcziAD92MUI001

oh oh....
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
AGW about to be buried?

Reply: Oh yea, I see, must be because the ice area anomaly is still close to 2 million sq/km below normal.

Please note the study states ice has thinned "up to" 51%. This does not mention how much other ice has thinned "down to." 1%?

It also states "Sea ice that was once 2.5 meters thick in 1991 is now 0.9 meters thick." Which sea ice? A study at the start of the summer used satellite data to state that ice had thinned from "an average" of 3 meters thick to "an average" of 2 meters thick.

Time lapse film of the polar ice shows an ocean in flux. The ice is always moving, and large amounts get flushed south past Greenland every year. (That particular ice "thins" from 2.0 meters thick to 0.0 meters thick.) Each and every year the pole, depending on winds, can see between 30% and 70% of its ice sloshed about and flushed south.

Until satellite data became available scientists had only scanty proof that arctic ice moves so swiftly and is so temporary. However they did have some idea, and to state they "had no idea," or to state the current situation is "unprecedented," is largely due to misinformation spread about by the creators of the debunked "hockey stick" graph.

The climate optimums of both the MWP and the Roman Warm Period are both conveniently erased by the "hockey stick" graph. The work of scientists who trudged across arctic wastes gathering data is trashed.

For example, Siberian driftwood is found on the north coast of Canada, and it is found BEHIND ice which is currently called "permanent." This driftwood radio-carbon-dates from Roman times.

Also the Vikings were able to sail to Greenland and Labrador through seas which were ice free. After they settled Greenland, becoming the the "natives," they were stressed by immigrant Eskimos arriving from the west. The Eskimos were able to settle the entire north coast of Canada (displacing the Dorset) and move down to the southern tip of Greenland in a very few years, a feat which would be unlikely to occur if the seas were solid ice.

Also, last summer a retreating glacier in Greenland exposed a crushed mass of brush and small trees, dating from Viking times, on the east coast, where trees and brush do not currently grow, even at sea level. In fact trees currently exist in Greenland in a single grove, carefully tended by a European, and these stunted specimens grow with the speed of banzai trees.

Lastly, the Viking dead were buried six feet under, in the European manner. That soil is now permafrost which requires a jack-hammer to dent.

It was my interest in Vikings which made me first become suspicious of the "hockey stick" graph. In order to believe in its false data, and get all worked up about the current phase of AMO-induced arctic melting, one needs to suspend their rational thought, and become a glassy-eyed sucker and chump.

data to 2007 means nothing... its 2008-09 today that matters and it ain't looking good for AGW. I reckon re-freeze has now started in earnest
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
Hudson bay ice getting quite prominent last 2 days.

Reply: ????. There is hardly any ice on Hudson Bay right now, and what small amount there is, based on the chart it is still below normal.

Also Cryosphere today
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ has removed all references to Al Gore... Ain't that interesting? LOL

paulm,

I wonder if the 5.0 magnitude earthquake at the northern tip of Greenland on August 15, 2008, had something to do with it?

http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/qed/

paulm,

I wonder if the 5.0 magnitude earthquake at the northern tip of Greenland on August 15, 2008, had something to do with it?

http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/qed/

Kipp: You wrote, "Even Mr. Tisdale who believes that El Nino may be the answer hasn't addressed Global Warming."

WHAT???

What do you mean I haven't addressed Global Warming? Click on the link attached to my name. In that post I showed that, since 1960, there is no need to include anthropogenic greenhouse gases in a replication of the instrument temperature record. Natural variations duplicate it quite well. The natural variations include Scafetta and West Phenomenological Solar Signal (PSS), volcanic aerosols, ENSO, the AMO, and North Pacific Residual.

Kipp: Why do you bait me? It would be best for you not to use my name to promote your mistaken AGW concepts, since all I'm going to do is throw a link to one of my posts back at you.

Kipp: You wrote, "In fact the