Dust flux, Vostok ice core

Dust flux, Vostok ice core
Two dimensional phase space reconstruction of dust flux from the Vostok core over the period 186-4 ka using the time derivative method. Dust flux on the x-axis, rate of change is on the y-axis. From Gipp (2001).

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Change in state for Arctic sea ice?

The recent Arctic Report Card concludes that  . . .
 the Arctic Ocean climate has reached a new state with characteristics different than those observed previously. The new ocean climate is characterized by less sea ice (both extent and thickness) and a warmer and fresher upper ocean than in 1979-2000. 
Well, this sort of thing just happens to be a specialty here. Let's look at the data to see what they mean.

The record of sea ice can be inferred here.



The National Snow and Ice Data Center has kindly drawn a regression line through the points.

We'll use the time delay method to reconstruct the phase space in two dimensions.


The choice of a two-year time delay is somewhat arbitrary, as one year also serves. The two reconstructions do not appear materially different.

We observe that the state tends to occupy a small area in phase space, centred at about 7 million sq-km (yellow) from the initiation of the data set (1981 in this projection) until about 2002, after which the system has evolved into a new area of phase space characterized by reduced ice cover. It doesn't yet trace out anything that looks stable in this new area, so I would not exclude the possibility that it is currently tracing out a transient excursion.


The extent of sea-ice cover in November has declined in a stepwise fashion since the early 1980s. Here we have tenatively labelled three possible areas of Lyapunov stability.

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We observe a decline in Arctic sea-ice cover over the past 30 years. Like other components of the climate system, it appears that sea-ice cover is prone to sudden changes in state. The direction of the change appears to be consistent with projections of the global warming hypothesis.

The caveat is that the records presented here are too short. We cannot be certain that the period of observations--in particular those from 1980 to 2000--were representative of "normal" climate. Consequently, the statement quoted at the beginning of this post seems premature.

The 1970s were at the end of a multi-decade period of global cooling. The Arctic sea-ice cover at the end of the 1970s may therefore have been unusually large, and the observed shift to reduced cover may be simply the natural variability in the system. We can't tell for sure because we would need to observe at least one more cycle of variability, and we do not have the records we need.

The only way to obtain longer records will be through some form of proxy measurement, either through micropaleontology (dinoflagellates seem to be a favourite), or concentration of aerosols in nearby glacial ice.

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