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In Which Decade will the Arctic Sea Ice Extent experience its LAST September with a minimum ABOVE 1X10^6 km^2?

2020-2030
67 (48.9%)
2030-2040
36 (26.3%)
2040-2050
13 (9.5%)
2050-2060
6 (4.4%)
2060-2070
6 (4.4%)
2070-2080
0 (0%)
2080-2090
0 (0%)
> 2090
9 (6.6%)

Total Members Voted: 128

Voting closed: May 29, 2017, 07:46:52 PM

Author Topic: Poll: When Will the Arctic Experience THE LAST Year With Sept. Sea Ice Extent  (Read 48247 times)

jai mitchell

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jai, thanks for that post-from-the-future.

iirc, a recent study found that the amount of fresh water needed to stop the AMOC is less than previously thought. It used to be one sverdrup, iirc, but I can't recall what the new figure is.

In any case, such an adjustment would make your scenario all the more likely.

I think we should start a radio hour with reports from various possible futures back to our current one! Or maybe videos. Like the old "You Are There" series that generally stared Walter Cronkeit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_There_(series)

We need some creativity in getting our messages out to a broader audience, it would seem.

I am writing you from late 2017.  Our recent podcast series of "messages from the climate future" was voted most depressing new podcast of the year. . .  :-\
Haiku of Futures Passed
My "burning embers"
are not tri-color bar graphs
+3C today

wili

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 :) :)
"A force de chercher de bonnes raisons, on en trouve; on les dit; et après on y tient, non pas tant parce qu'elles sont bonnes que pour ne pas se démentir." Choderlos de Laclos "You struggle to come up with some valid reasons, then cling to them, not because they're good, but just to not back down."

TerryM

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I think we should start a radio hour with reports from various possible futures back to our current one! Or maybe videos. Like the old "You Are There" series that generally stared Walter Cronkeit.



"Uncle Walter" certainly would make a grand spokesman for the cause - actually for any cause.


When he got on board with the anti-war movement during Vietnam, we knew we had won. The voice, the glasses, the mustache, all enhanced the deep gravitas that was Walter Cronkite. His booming pronouncements, even poorly heard through the cheap speakers of a plastic box as one fiddled with the rabbit ears to lessen the static, told us truth. Not truth as we wanted it to be, nor truth as they were spinning it, but truth as a pure distillation of the facts of the time.


We'll never accept such authority again, and that's probably good. But for decades he was the conscience of America, the burning bush that couldn't be ignored.


Thanks for bringing him to mind.
Terry

wili

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"We'll never accept such authority again"

Funny, I was thinking the same thing to myself as I wrote the above!

Great minds...?? ;D
"A force de chercher de bonnes raisons, on en trouve; on les dit; et après on y tient, non pas tant parce qu'elles sont bonnes que pour ne pas se démentir." Choderlos de Laclos "You struggle to come up with some valid reasons, then cling to them, not because they're good, but just to not back down."

TerryM

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DavidR

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The answer to this poll probably lies in the thermohaline circulation that currently transmits vast amounts of heat into the North Atlantic.  The lack of ice in the North Atlantic is one of the anomalies of the cryosphere. Everywhere else ice forms down to below 70 deg whether in the Pacific, Baffin or the Antarctic, during winter.

Should the effect of the thermohaline circulation decline sufficiently in the North Atlantic as some have suggested then both volume and extent would probably rebound.

However, without that,  the volume of ice created each year is significantly less than the amount lost.

The trend lines for volume in July, August, September, October and November all reach zero in the 2020's. Without a significant change in the trends September volume above 1000 km^3 after 2030  seems highly  improbable.
Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore

Shared Humanity

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What would that mean in terms of extent?

LRC1962

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I have just been catching up with this forum. Someone mentioned that anyone putting a vote for 2090+ is a denialist. I am anything but. In fact I see predominately  ice free conditions by September starting no later then 2030 and would not be surprised to see it before 2020. The point I made and I bbelieve there are others who voted for 2090+ see the same thing, is if the weather hit perfectly, you could end up with ice extent over 1M km2 in any single year. To deny that possibility means you are looking at Arctic temps by mid summer getting no lower then 5C in any particular year, which even the most extreme forecasts do not call for.
"All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second,  it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident."
       - Arthur Schopenhauer

Jim Williams

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I have just been catching up with this forum. Someone mentioned that anyone putting a vote for 2090+ is a denialist. I am anything but. In fact I see predominately  ice free conditions by September starting no later then 2030 and would not be surprised to see it before 2020. The point I made and I bbelieve there are others who voted for 2090+ see the same thing, is if the weather hit perfectly, you could end up with ice extent over 1M km2 in any single year. To deny that possibility means you are looking at Arctic temps by mid summer getting no lower then 5C in any particular year, which even the most extreme forecasts do not call for.

That is very logical, however, even the most extreme forecasts do not agree with the paleontological evidence.  The evidence is for sudden and generally rather extreme change.

oren

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I have just been catching up with this forum. Someone mentioned that anyone putting a vote for 2090+ is a denialist. I am anything but. In fact I see predominately  ice free conditions by September starting no later then 2030 and would not be surprised to see it before 2020. The point I made and I bbelieve there are others who voted for 2090+ see the same thing, is if the weather hit perfectly, you could end up with ice extent over 1M km2 in any single year. To deny that possibility means you are looking at Arctic temps by mid summer getting no lower then 5C in any particular year, which even the most extreme forecasts do not call for.
LRC, you are not a denialist of course, you just have a different opinion. That someone whom you mention has been reprimanded for that post.

Let It Go

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Jai,
This is definitely a revealing poll about what the people here at ASIF think about the demise of Arctic sea ice.
Now, I can see exactly why practically half the people who voted, voted 2020-2030 (because I voted in that category).
I can also see why some people voted > 2090: denialists or essentially the same thing, trolls.
Finally, I can also see why some people voted 2030-2040: "lukewarmists", which is a special form of denialism, where you recognize the reality but just wish you can retire before "the shit hits the fan" the worst effects of AGW show themselves clearly.

What I really don't get is why some people voted 2040-2050 (12 people as of now), 2050-2060 (5) or 2060-2070 (6).

What is the tortuous reasoning that leads some people to postpone (in their minds) the conclusion of the disaster that is happening right under their eyes? Is it just younger "lukewarmists"? Or denialists just using some sophistry to obfuscate the science?

Perhaps some of them could come forward and explain their "point of view"? Or anybody here wants to play "devil's advocate" (for each of these three categories)?

I don't think it's weird people voted for 2040-2070 at all.
If we have a look at 2013 and 2014 we see 2 years in which minimum sea ice volume increased by more than 1000Km3. That even though 2014 was at the time the hottest year in recorded history according to NASA. It's not farfetched at all to imagine a year colder than 2014 happening in 2050 in which ice volume can increase by the same amount as it has increased in 2014.

You can talk all you want about positive feedbacks. But fact to the matter is that positive feedbacks from the low extent in 2012 didn't lead to another decrease in the following years. So i don't sea a reason positive feedbacks from low extent in the future will lock ice extent below 1million km2

jai mitchell

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It's not farfetched at all to imagine a year colder than 2014 happening in 2050 . . .

actually, yes it very very much is.

Haiku of Futures Passed
My "burning embers"
are not tri-color bar graphs
+3C today

DavidR

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In the Arctic a year as cool as 2014 seems even less likely by 2050.  Personally I  don't think any of us will live long enough to see an Arctic or world as cool as 2014 again.
Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore

Shared Humanity

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It's not farfetched at all to imagine a year colder than 2014 happening in 2050 . . .

actually, yes it very very much is.

Pretty clear you are right jai. If you do look at this El Nino spike and compare it to 1998, I can imagine having a couple of years over the next 3 or 4 years cooler or nearly equivalent.

Forest Dweller

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Before 2020 i would say like many others here, so no vote sorry ;)

Based on the whole myriad of feedbacks of course and things mentioned earlier, but also based on what we do NOT know and understand.

As Shakova mentioned before:"How can people discuss geoengineering in context to climate when we do not understand climate yet? "
Her own research area is minute when you think about it...

But also there is the "X-factor", for lack of a better term.
What effect will the death of every forest biome, kelp forest, reefs etc have?
What else are we forgetting as AGW smacks us in the face regularly with unexpectedly bad news?
I would mention the utter stupidity and addiction of industrial society for one:

This is easy to see in my city in The Netherlands where a full scale attack on nature has been launched.
Whatever needs to happen for climate and nature, they do the opposite.
It does not matter our air is the filthiest in Europe and there is hardly a tree left standing.
It does not matter how many highly endangered species my own research turns up, they destroy them faster and slander, hack or threaten us with corruption winning all the way.

I would therefore also argue that "Anthropocene global warming" is a ridiculous term.
Do we study and monitor climate change since the arrival of hominids or even Homo sapiens?
NO, we look at the industrial age and for good reason.
Clearly it should be named Industrial Global Warming.

Besides, the brave non-industrialized humans deserve the respect not being included in that blame game anyway, we are screwed...

Paddy

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I went for 2040-50 because of all the intra-trend noise that tends to produce the odd icier year with good freezing and poor melting conditions, but it was a tough call between that and 2030-40.

Hyperion

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Last year. The Arctic may have made more ice than any year in the past few decades this winter. And it obviously has exported more. Vicious cycle of latent heat release, exporting cold that might have otherwise been chilling a shrinking surface layer.
Policy: The diversion of NZ aluminum production to build giant space-mirrors to melt the icecaps and destroy the foolish greed-worshiping cities of man. Thereby returning man to the sea, which he should never have left in the first place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGillicuddy_Serious_Party

jai mitchell

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I would be very shocked if this winter produced much more volume of ice than any year before.  In fact, i would be shocked if it produced THE SAME amount of ice as any year previously.  the export is simply not that great of a factor as a percent of total volume.
Haiku of Futures Passed
My "burning embers"
are not tri-color bar graphs
+3C today