North Pole Ice Melting or a Matter of Measurement?

Arctic Ice Sheet: Everyone’s Argument For And Against Anthropogenic Global Warming, or AGW

The Arctic Ice Sheet is the acid test for Anthropogenic Global Warming. Although accurate records as to extant of its thickness are only 30 years old and meaningful records as to depth, as recently as a decade, one would think that scientists have been tracking its thickness and extent for the last 500 years, given the almost daily updates by an irrationally panicked media.The fact is that as sea ice, the Arctic ice cap is notoriously unstable. It waxes and wanes, gets warmer and colder, and breaks apart constantly. Wind and currents have as much to do with its state as weather. So here are two contrasting stories, both from Germany, mere months apart:

From The New Scientist:

Arctic ice continues to thin

August 2, 2008.

“SANTA is skating on very thin ice. In 2007 the sea ice at the North Pole was at its thinnest since records began.

Christian Haas of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, and his team estimated the thickness of late summer ice at the North Pole in 2001, 2004 and 2007. They found that the ice was on average 1.3 metres thick at the end of the summer in 2007. By contrast, its depth was 2.3 metres in 2001 and 2.6 metres in 2004.

Previously, glaciologists had measured ice thickness in spots by placing instruments directly on the ice. Records from 1991 show that the summer ice that year was 3.1 metres thick.

While the ice at the North Pole used to be thick “old” ice, much of it now is thinner first-year ice, which has had only a single winter to grow.

Earlier studies had already shown that the extent of Arctic sea ice reached its lowest level in 2007, 23 per cent below the previous minimum set in 2005. Taken together, the studies suggest that the Arctic could soon be ice-free during summer.”

Then there is the German translation of new findings from Anthony Watts of Watts Up With That:

“Surprising Results

At the North Pole ice sheet is thicker than expected

The “Polar 5″ in Bremerhaven

The research aircraft Polar 5 “ended today in Canada’s recent Arctic expedition. During the flight, researchers have measured the current Eisstärke measured at the North Pole, and in areas that have never before been overflown. Result: The sea-ice in the surveyed areas is apparently thicker than the researchers had suspected.

Normally, ice is newly formed after two years, over two meters thick. “Here were Eisdicken up to four meters,” said a spokesman of Bremerhaven’s Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. For scientists, this result is still in contradiction to the warming of the seawater.”

It is obvious from the tenor of the latter story that the author did not expect (wish?) to find a fully recovered ice field. One can almost taste his disappointment. Since the measure of arctic ice over any extant is a recent development, an open mind would be a more facile way to deal with data.

The story also references arctic sea temperatures as “warming”. In fact, while surface air temperatures warmed from 1980 to 2006 or so, they have since cooled. As for water temperature, this statement is very deceptive. As a whole, planetary water temperatures have not risen in 10 years. Arctic water temperatures are established by ocean currents, and there is absolutely no indication that natural ocean current oscillations have been disrupted. And if the sea water were unnaturally hot, the ice would be unnaturally less in extent and thickness.

I would say that these Global Warmists may have just undone themselves.

by pat

Image – Global Warming Cartoon

Tags: Artic, Global warming, ice, North Pole, thicker, thickness