Hi Byron,

Yours is the first comment I've seen on PIOMAS and Neven's point.  Do 
you have Neven's email?  He has reproduced the PIOMAS exponential trend 
graph for sea ice volume [1], when it was deleted from the PIOMAS site!  
What's going on?  Is it too frightening?

I've only just joined RealClimate to see what was being said on the sea 
ice minimum discussion.  There is a lot to read through, but so far I've 
been disappointed not to learn more.  In fact I have been appalled that 
there seems to be so little understanding of the scary situation that we 
are in.  So I did a big posting the other day, #132 [2], but there 
doesn't seem to have been any posting since - what have I done?!

I am trying to get as accurate as I can in the scale of the problem, 
rather than the details.  However, as regards details, I was told there 
was, according to the measurements of Cryosphere Today [3], a record 
minimum 2.917 (million km-2) for just one day, 7th September.  The sea 
ice area then grew again above the 2007 minimum on the 8th, but then 
shrank again to 2.928 on 9th, [4] showing latest.  Having a record is 
symbolic - because having a record is something you can tell journalists 
to make a story.  And it makes for a lot of discussion - because people 
like arguing about details that they can easily grasp and are not too 
important.

To understand the scale of the problem, you've got to understand the 
heat fluxes and the behaviour of sea ice.  There is a very strong 
positive feedback from the albedo effect, which is where I putting the 
percentages: 40% on now 2011, 70% on first sea ice disappearance and 
near 100% on 6 months ice free respectively. Once there is 6 months ice 
free, further retreat will not have much albedo effect because the sun 
will be so low in the winter months.  That's why I said "near 100".

Neven might be right about some residual ice, but I'm ignoring that, 
because it will have negligible effect on albedo forcing.  We don't know 
what will happen at the "dying moments" - I fear that there is a fierce 
positive feedback of wave action that could cut in towards the end, and 
cause the ice to disappear more rapidly towards the end.

The climate scientists have been consistently optimistic in their 
forecasts.  That to me is the most frightening thing - people's 
behaviour to understate (or totally ignore) the size of the really big 
problems and the mortal danger they pose.  For example, the Arctic 
methane threat has been almost totally ignored.  But, if one knows a bit 
about human psychology, this is what one should expect - it's a mental 
block brought on by "mortality salience" [5].  It's particularly 
frightening when you see it in the top experts who are supposed to be 
advising governments.  I just don't know what to do about it, except by 
persuading individuals and trying to get a snowball effect*.  Any help 
would be appreciated.

Cheers,

John

* P.S.   I am not giving up on government advisers.  I'm organising an 
Arctic methane workshop, 15-16th October, here in London, to try and 
scope the problem and explore what can be done.

[1] http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2011/09/piomas-august-2011.html

[2] 
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/09/arctic-sea-ice-minimum-discussions/comment-page-3/#comments

[3] http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/index.new.some.html

[4] http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory

---

On 10/09/2011 00:20, Byron Smith wrote:
> Greetings John,
>
> While I share a deep concern and alarm over what is happening in the Arctic, it is important that we are accurate in our descriptions of it. I noticed a few minor discrepancies between your post and impressions I have gleaned from my own reading.
>
> "The end of the sea ice is clear, with downward trend established on volume and a record minimum extent today."
> I assume you meant the other way around: a new record minimum<i>volume</i>  and a downward trend on<i>extent</i>. As I understand it, extent this year is likely to end up slightly higher than 2007, though depending on weather conditions over the next couple of weeks, the extent record might still fall. A record for lowest Arctic sea ice area is an even higher chance (area and extent are separate metrics, though the latter is more widely quoted and discussed). You can follow the progress of the various metrics here:
> http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/09/arctic-sea-ice-minimum-discussions/
>
> "When the end summer is free, we'll be about 70% of the way, from PIOMAS expected 2015 more likely than 2016"
> I assume you are referring to the quadratic binomial trend fitted to the graph in your second link. Neven (who put it together) acknowledges in your first link that in practice it is very unlikely to follow the curve all the way down, as negative feedbacks will likely result in some small amount of sea ice clinging on to the coast of Greenland for some time. The same applies to winter maximum predictions of around 2020. While these declines are indeed alarming, there is no point giving hostages to fortune with relatively unlikely predictions.
>
> "The forcing produced corresponds to those percentages."
> Doesn't the forcing relate pretty much exclusively to summer sea ice, since albedo has little role to play during an Arctic winter?
>
> "And, as that forcing increases, the Arctic warming accelerates"
> Do you simply mean that as the forcing increases the Arctic warming increases or are you suggesting that there is a non-linear relation between forcing and warming? Are you also aware of a recent<i>Nature</i>  study that suggested that earlier fears of an overwhelming positive Arctic albedo feedback may have been premature?
> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7326/full/nature09653.html
>
> Grace&  peace,
> Byron Smith
>
> PhD candidate in Christian Ethics
> School of Divinity
> Edinburgh University