Disappearing Arctic Ice 1987 – 2014

Of all the visuals I typically present in my dog-and-pony shows on the road, the most stunning and convincing is this animation from NOAA.
What it shows is that, as incredible as the loss of Arctic sea ice extent has been over the last 4 decades, the loss in VOLUME has been even more significant.
Below, the most recent graph for september sea ice extent minimums up to 2014. Note the huge drops in 2007, followed by much ballyhooed “recovery”, then the drop in 2012, and subsequent “recovery”.
In Denierville, the sea ice is always “recovering”, even as it slips steadily away.

2014sea_ice500

Here, a typical Fox News headline promising sea ice recovery.  Note – the exciting science menu promises us a whole section devoted to “Dinosaurs”. (I love dinosaurs!)

foxnewsdinos

foxnewsdinos2

 

21 thoughts on “Disappearing Arctic Ice 1987 – 2014”


    1. Andy Lee’s graphic is a great one, and likely to be better understood by laymen, but my candidate for the most “eloquent” is the Arctic Sea Ice Death Spiral.

      http://youtu.be/qUO23Y179pU

      It is perhaps also more “elegant” also, since its circular plot compresses a 40+ year string of data into a small space and keeps it all on the screen so that one can really see the year-to-year trend (and by month). A linear plot on this scale would be 20+ feet long. A lot of data compressed into one graphic, and the use of the polar map for the background and the funeral march add some “artsiness”.

      I actually like Andy’s other graphic better (below), since it provides much the same info as Death Spiral. The music and the slowly creeping data “bug” in Death Spiral also seem more appropriate to the situation (or is it just that the “morbidity” of it turns me on?)

      http://youtu.be/GetB-xs9D_A

      Reply

    2. (Posted this but it didn’t take, maybe because of two links—-I’ll make it two messages and see if that works).

      Andy Lee’s graphic is a great one, and likely to be better understood by laymen, but my candidate for the most “eloquent” is the Arctic Sea Ice Death Spiral.

      http://youtu.be/qUO23Y179pU

      It is perhaps also more “elegant” also, since its circular plot compresses a 40+ year string of data into a small space and keeps it all on the screen so that one can really see the year-to-year trend (and by month). A linear plot on this scale would be 20+ feet long. A lot of data compressed into one graphic, and the use of the polar map for the background and the funeral march add some “artsiness”.

      Reply

      1. I actually like Andy’s other graphic better (below) than the “ice cubes”, since it provides much the same info as Death Spiral. The music and the slowly creeping data “bug” in Death Spiral seem more appropriate to the situation (or is it just that the “morbidity” of it turns me on?)

        http://youtu.be/GetB-xs9D_A

        Reply

        1. I know that one isn’t yours—-I’m familiar with all of yours and they’re all excellent—-different ways of slicing and dicing the data work for different folks. This other graphic of yours approaches the “death spiral” circular plot in richness of data but to my eye will not be as striking to the layman’s eye or as easy to understand as your “shrinking ice cube” in delivering the message.

          http://youtu.be/oFMDmS783Ro

          I’ve already said that I’m a “Visual Display of Quantitative Data” freak and have a couple of Tufte books on my shelves. Tufte would approve of your work.

          Reply

    3. I actually like Andy’s other graphic better (below), since it provides much the same info as Death Spiral. The music and the slowly creeping data “bug” in Death Spiral also seem more appropriate to the situation (or is it just that the “morbidity” of it turns me on?)

      http://youtu.be/GetB-xs9D_A

      Reply

        1. Yep, it’s no surprise that you like “that one”, since it fits right in with your self-deluded denier world view.

          This post is about disappearing arctic sea ice over the past 15 or 20 years, NOT about mountain glaciers 500 years ago. Mountain glaciers hold less than 1% of the ice on the planet anyway, and they have been melting at ever-accelerating rates in the recent past as well.

          It’s a shame you waste your remaining undamaged neurons grasping at straws and trying to nitpick your way around the truth of AGW. You can’t seem to find any source of data other than the Lomborgs, Lindzens, Spencers, Watts, and other paid denier shills of Heartland and the fossil fuel interests. That’s sad and sorry.

          Reply

          1. What’s really a shame is that you can’t seem toaddressin a facts at all, always throwing a at ad hominem comments at people. Yes, the webpage I gave you was from the distant past true enough but, it goes to show one that everything goes in NATURAL CYCLES, in case you didn’t pick up on that. So while are we worrying, it all come back!


          2. What’s a bigger shame, Richard, is that you seem to have little or no understanding of the meaning of the term “ad hominem”. I am not the only one to have pointed out to you that your postings on Crock are simply parroting of tired denier horseshit, that you seem to have little understanding of the science behind AGW, and that your denier blogosphere “sources” have all been debunked and discredited many times over. If you posted any real FACTS rather than cherry-picked distortions of fact, we would talk about them rather than your unsupported and unoriginal OPINIONS, which are of little interest to us.

            Calling someone a “self-deluded denier” when they keep spouting denier propaganda is not an ad hominem attack, but rather a statement of fact. It is evident to all Crockers that what I say is so—you are not the first shill-troll-denier-willfully ignorant functional illiterate to comment here. (Thankfully, you’re one of only a handful). To simplify, I’m not saying your comments are wrong because you’re an idiot, I’m saying that your mindless and repeated insistence on making wrong arguments is idiotic. Do you see the difference:?

            The webpage you “gave” us is irrelevant to arctic sea ice in the here-and-now. Why do you waste our time? And yes, “…..everything goes in NATURAL CYCLES….” (which I DID pick up on). Yep, tide comes in, tide goes out, sun comes up, sun goes down, Bears shit in the woods, and ice ages and glaciers come and go.

            You say, “So while we are worrying, it all comes back!”, which I presume refers to ice somehow. Yep, it’s likely that a LOT of ice will “come back” with the next ice age, but those of us that are better informed and less ideologically blinded than you are indeed “worried” that man has disrupted the “natural cycles” so badly through AGW that much suffering and destruction lie ahead before “natural cycles” resume


  3. I used to joke about this, but now I’m not so sure: I can see a future Faux News headline
    “Arctic Ice up a whopping 150% in ONE YEAR!!”
    All that would be needed would be for ice to fall to 2 mill km2 one summer, and then rise, quite reasonably, back up to 5 mill km2 the next year. One would hope even the Faux-News-compromised would ‘get’ what was going on, but your headline above makes me wonder…

    Reply

  5. I actually like Andy’s other graphic better (below), since it provides much the same info as Death Spiral. The music and the slowly creeping data “bug” in Death Spiral also seem more appropriate to the situation (or is it just that the “morbidity” of it turns me on?)

    http://youtu.be/GetB-xs9D_A

    Reply

  7. Talk about “disappearing arctic ice”, how about when it almost goes up in a puff of smoke? Article in today’s WashPost about an ice cap on an island in the Svalbards that has lost 0NE HUNDRED SIXTY feet of its thickness in just the last two years. That’s 1/6 of it’s total thickness and the rate of ice flow to the sea is now 25 times greater.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/01/23/an-arctic-ice-caps-shockingly-rapid-slide-into-the-sea/

    Reply
  8. Pingback: Poles apart | Wibble

  9. Don’t know what’s up with WordPress, but it’s now putting up the things I tried to post two days ago about Andy Lee’s graphics on arctic sea ice. Oh well, it’s a message that is important enough that some repetition can’t hurt.

    Reply

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