The article does show thickening of sea ice in the high arctic! Arctic sea ice extent is a separate issue.

GTW, you choose to deride these data showing ice thickening yet you get all excited about data showing a melting trend. Why is this? Perhaps you want the Arctic to melt?

Well if the intense PV that the models are forecasting for about ten days time is anything to go by we should see quite a dramatic increase in ice during early February?

Well quite clearly either you didn't read or didn't understand my post.

What I was demonstrating is that the apparently huge number that Four quoted is at best very misleading.  The article doesn't show that the ice is thickening, it makes some rather broad assumptions based on 'eyeballing' three charts.  I took the trouble to do the maths to show that across the entire Arctic basin, which is relevant at this stage of the cycle, the overall effect is zero.

I'm not sure about your choice of language - just perhaps it says more about your mindset than mine? I'm not 'excited' by the loss: 'concerned' would be more appropriate.  How could you be excited by what is happening? 

Have you anything thoughtful to contribute, other than having another pop at me because I hold a different view to you?  Maybe you should stay away if this is the style of contribution, i.e. dive in, make a rude personal comment and run away again?

Disappointing.

Let's hope so Gavin.  It will be interesting to see the response in ice extent/cover.

Sorry Four, it look slike you didn't understand my post. 

I have demonstrated that the alleged volume increase in the areas he looked at is matched by the loss of ice elsewhere.  It's not a precise calculation but neither is the one claiming the increase.

I agree that volume is important - we had this discussion some weeks ago.  The trend of volume loss is very marked and it would be encouraging to see a sustained recovery.

Dave, I agree that the article makes that point, but your selective choice of extract was misleading.  Anyone just skimming these posts might assume that there is less of a problem in Greenland.  The article just presents a rather different balance of opinion, I think.

I don't agree that only assessments across the entire arctic basin matter.

What appears to be happening over the last few years is that multi-year ice is making some recovery in the high arctic while at the same time, we are seeing continued loss at the periphery. Whether this trend to thicker ice in the high arctic continues is unknown but it is an issue which is perfectly valid to discuss. And surely if the long term trend in arctic sea ice decline was to reverse, a thickening of ice in the high arctic would likely precede any recovery at the periphery.

I think in terms of thickness and durability we can view all ice 5 years or under as potentially able to melt out as quickly as ice of 1 season. This leaves us with approx. no 'Paleocrystic ice (10yrs and over) and very little ice over 5 years.

We shall see this summer once we cross reference the 'age' of ice map with the melt areas we witness?

Hi Gray-Wolf

There is a recurring theme here, as you will have noticed.  A number of people see nothing of concern or nothing that won't be reversed by the expected/hoped for cooling phase.  This means that we have to wait for ever clearer evidence that what is happening is unusual and not easily reversible - if indeed this is the case, as we fear.

In passing, there has been a decent build of ice extent in the last few days and 2011 is now up to last year's levels and still just ahead of 2006.  We are however still 2 million sq km down on the 1979-2000 norm for this point in the cycle.

Hi GTW!

In the same way there was a clamour for 'recovery' and highest max in 10yrs and latest max in 'x' year only to have it fall silent as the 'weak' ice showed itself with a record melt rate early in the season the guys clamouring for 'older ice/thicker ice must face the same as they see their prize act as it must.

I'm sure we neither of us wish to be witnessing what we are and would like for nothing more than a year on year concerted build in the areas that matter (N.Greenland ,N Canadian Archipelago , South Beaufort) but we have to rely upon the expert guidance we are given lest be crushed each year by the disappointment of the scale of melt and the areas we see losses occur.

Why would anyone wish for an ice free Arctic? The scale of impacts is only just being felt and we are only just over half way to the 'seasonal pack' with most of the Basin melted by early Aug.

I note the Sun gaining height here, won't be long to those long ,balmy twilights?

Ice loss through the Fram Strait has been much discussed here of late. These results coming from and presumably based on oxygen isotope proportions in the tiny remains of foraminifera. When this technique was first used, it came up with results that helped comfirm the history of many ice ages rather than four. Something that the mainstream consensus had great difficulty with. (If I remember correctly). It's good stuff IMO. However, the conclusions here depend, I think, on assumptions that sea currents have remained the same for 2000 years and I am fairly sure we don't know that.

I shall read the comments on the research with interest.

The temperatures of North Atlantic Ocean water flowing north into the Arctic Ocean adjacent to Greenland -- the warmest water in at least 2,000 years -- are likely related to the amplification of global warming in the Arctic, says a new international study involving the University of Colorado Boulder.

Led by Robert Spielhagen of the Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Literature in Mainz, Germany, the study showed that water from the Fram Strait that runs between Greenland and Svalbard -- an archipelago constituting the northernmost part of Norway -- has warmed roughly 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century. The Fram Strait water temperatures today are about 2.5 degrees F warmer than during the Medieval Warm Period, which heated the North Atlantic from roughly 900 to 1300 and affected the climate in Northern Europe and northern North America.

The team believes that the rapid warming of the Arctic and recent decrease in Arctic sea ice extent are tied to the enhanced heat transfer from the North Atlantic Ocean, said Spielhagen. According to CU-Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center, the total loss of Arctic sea ice extent from 1979 to 2009 was an area larger than the state of Alaska, and some scientists there believe the Arctic will become ice-free during the summers within the next several decades.

"Such a warming of the Atlantic water in the Fram Strait is significantly different from all climate variations in the last 2,000 years," said Spielhagen, also of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Keil, Germany.

from -

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110127141659.htm

Just a question: " The Fram Strait water temperatures today are about 2.5 degrees F warmer than during the Medieval Warm Period"

- how can they say that with any confidence?

Yes we do. We have the evidence of the foram counts.

Still, it's a start.Should conclusions be drawn so early though?.

Mind you.The big oil drilling companies should be able to give us a better view soon if things pan out in accordance with AGW theory.

I think they might be walking into one of Mother Nature's Moods ,like the rest of us speculators.

Eitherway.

She shouldn't be taken for granted and can be relied upon to be unpredictable..

As with AGW generally as it gains in strength it will move from 'augmenting' some natural cycles (with the rest 'dampening it's impacts) to overpowering the Natural cycles (both positive and negative).

As such we should 'expect' to see smaller versions of the changes we are witnessing as various drivers 'interacted' to provide the conditions for this change.

Fram is just such an example with past fluctuations being purely driven by natural cycles. What I would expect is an exaggeration of these past movements as AGW augments these old drivers bringing us an extreme example of what once was a purely natural occurrence?

As has been noted Foram/Diatom counts plot these advances/retreats in the ice front but none show a change as great as we see today.

Why, over all that time, is such a change absent?

 Why do we only see it today???

What has changed?

I think we need to actually study the 'zone fossils' to see how much they can tell us about the environment they need and what conditions prevail today where these species occur?

I know that the Diatoms react very quickly to movements in the ice front as they are 'light dependent' and that those 'twirly' Foram's are very temp dependant (to within 2c?). Would we expect them to appear in polynya's or do we only see them advance/retreat with the ice front itself?

I am no fan in the scale of the changes we see today (though feel privileged to be alive through such 'interesting times'?) and would honestly prefer them to be no more than a natural ,cyclical expression of Arctic Sea Ice. Sadly I must take on board the wealth of evidence that points towards this being a 'novel' (in terms of the time since the last ice age) retreat in the Arctic Sea ice?

I hope we can get away from the competition aspect of Arctic sea ice that seems to be apparent here in some posts sometimes and get down to the science.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2011/01/if_the_arctic_is_really.html

Maybe it's not a Canary at all?

 Maybe it's a Norwegian Blue?

What concerned me was not the content of the article, as most of us on this forum would already be aware of much of the subject matter, but some of the statements made in the comments section.

Has anyone got a link to current arctic sea ice anomaly? I would expect that the recovery has now accelerated due to the switch to positive AO.

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png

^ few days delay in data.