Let’s continue from where I left in previous post about a Newsweek fact check of the claim that “humanity would end by 2023”. This claim was made in 2018 and attributed to James Anderson in a gritpost article. The fact checker made the argument that the gritpost article didn’t correctly report on Anderson’s claim and that the claim was in fact about the polar ice caps, more specifically, that “unless the world stopped using fossil fuels by 2023, the effect on the polar ice caps would be irreversible“.
That seems rather vague, especially after having read the articles that were used by the fact checker. I think he pretty much understated the actual claim that was reported in those articles:
The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero.
It was also reported that Anderson believed that it would not be possible to recover just by reducing emissions. It would take a WW2-style transformation of industry, starting to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and making an effort to reflect sunlight away from the earth’s poles. This all had to be done within five years, otherwise no permanent ice would be left after 2022. By the way, we didn’t do any of these in the last five years.
Because of the statement that an effort to reflect sunlight away from the earth’s poles would be necessary, I initially assumed that the albedo effect would be important in Anderson’s reasoning and therefor Arctic sea ice extent would be the dataset to look at in order to figure out how Anderson envisaged the Arctic sea ice plunging towards zero in those five years.
But then, I played around with Arctic sea ice extent data at the end of last year and couldn’t remember seeing anything that would point to this.
The claim was attributed to a speech that Anderson gave in January 2018, so the latest known minimum extent data point back then was of September 2017. Trying some trends from 1979 until 2017 that eventually go to zero gives this:
The quadratic trend went to zero by 2040 and the linear trend by 2070. Other trends didn’t even go to zero. This made me wonder which trajectory Anderson anticipated back in 2018. That must have been a pretty steep decline in order to get to zero in just five years…
Then I found an AP fact check in which Anderson was asked whether he actually made the claim in 2018 that “humanity would end by 2023” (my emphasis):
He said that during the seminar, he was displaying the most recent observations of Arctic sea ice volume – specifically the ice floating on the Arctic Ocean – and made the statement that “the current observed rate of floating ice loss volume, there will be no floating ice remaining by 2022.”
The focus of the statement was on the floating ice volume and the observed rate of disappearance at that time, he said.
If that quote is accurate, then this learns me two things. First, it confirms that Anderson actually made the claim that there would not be Arctic sea ice left by 2022. Second, Anderson’s prediction was in fact a projection of the Arctic sea ice volume trend using the observations that were available at the beginning of 2018.
Could that be the case? Trying some trends from the minimum volume data until 2017 indeed shows that the quadratic trend crosses the x-axis at 2023:
So yes, it is entirely possible to arrive at a sea ice free Arctic in 2023, by looking at volume instead of extent.
It is a bit underwhelming though. Anderson was presented in the gritpost article as a “top climate scientist”, a title that gave much more weight to what he was saying and this resulted in people taking his claim at face value. His dire prediction was however not based on knowledge about the Arctic sea ice, but was just a simple projection of a trend that seems to have changed trajectory in the meanwhile.
Trust, yet verify 
Reblogged this on Utopia, you are standing in it!.
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May climate alarmists (obviously including Anderson) think that Arctic Amplification is due to albedo feedback: open water reflecting away less sunlight. They’re wrong, because the Arctic gets so little sunlight that it emits much more radiation (as LWIR) than it absorbs (as sunlight).
Decreased Arctic sea ice coverage increases water evaporation, cooling the ocean by evaporative heat loss. It is a negative (attenuating) feedback mechanism:
warmer water temp → less sea ice coverage → more evaporation → cooler water temp (though warmer air)
Based on Nimbus-5 observations, Zwally, et al. 1983 reported that:
“…the release of heat to the atmosphere from the open water is up to 100 times greater than the heat conducted through the ice.”
Ref: https://sealevel.info/Zwally1983_19840002650.pdf#page=19
It’s an important effect, as the U.S. Antarctic Program explains:
“Sea ice regulates exchanges of heat, moisture and salinity in the polar oceans. It insulates the relatively warm ocean water from the cold polar atmosphere except where cracks, or leads, in the ice allow exchange of heat and water vapor from ocean to atmosphere in winter. The number of leads determines where and how much heat and water are lost to the atmosphere, which may affect local cloud cover and precipitation.”
Ref:
https://antarcticsun.usap.gov/aroundthecontinent/1200/#:~:text=Sea%20ice%20regulates,cover%20and%20precipitation [2]
The NSIDC says:
“Less ice also contributes to higher air temperatures by allowing transfer of heat from the relatively warmer ocean.”
Ref: https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2014/03/#:~:text=Less%20ice%20also%20contributes,warmer%20ocean
The Arctic’s radiation balance is negative, almost all ear long. Only very briefly, around summer solstice, is it in approximate balance. That means reduced ice coverage increases radiant energy LEAVING the ocean MORE than it increases the amount of solar energy absorbed by it. The Arctic’s radiant energy deficit is made up by heat carried north by wind and water.
https://sealevel.info/2015_lecuyer_eeb_jcli_fig7-8.html
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Thanks for the detailed information, Dave.
I don’t know whether Anderson thinks that Arctic Amplification is due to albedo feedback. As I said, it was entirely my own assumption based on one of the conditions that he stated were needed for recovery.
In the meanwhile, I found what seems like the slides of the speech he gave. No mention of the albedo feedback though, although one slide seems to suggest it. Unfortunately, what I found is not the text of the speech itself, only the slides, so I can’t be sure about that.
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