From Andy Lee Robinson – video description:
This is an animated visualization of the startling decline of Arctic Sea Ice, showing the minimum volume reached every September since 1979, set on a map of New York with a 10km grid to give an idea of scale. It is clear that the trend of Arctic sea ice decline indicates that it’ll be ice-free for an increasingly large part of the year, with consequences for the climate.
The rate of ice loss in the Arctic is staggering. Since 1979, the volume of Summer Arctic sea ice has declined by more than 80% and accelerating faster than scientists believed it would, or even could melt.
Based on the rate of change of volume over the last 30 years, I expect the first ice-free summer day in the Arctic Ocean (defined as having less than 1 million km² of sea ice) to happen between 2016 and 2022, and thereafter occur more regularly with the trend of ice-free duration extending into August and October.
I also composed and played the piano music, “Ice Dreams”. A longer version played live can be found here: http://youtu.be/_miBCygvO4Y
A full HD 1080p version is available for broadcast, and can be customized on request.
Great piece of work, Andy. Thanks for the update. I never paid much attention to the NY area map that you used as “wallpaper”, because my eye was always quickly drawn to the graph and the change in the relative sizes of the two ice cubes.
Now that you’ve pointed it out, you’ve got me thinking. First, my home town is about 30 km due west of Manhattan, and that would put it just under the middle of the left edge of the 1979 cube. Second, for those who have never been to NYC and North Jersey, there might be a better way of giving them some meaningful “wallpaper” in the drawing and showing them a more understandable melting.
I’m thinking about it but need to finish mowing the lawn first—-it has finally stopped raining in northern VA—-no extreme weather here folks, no AGW effects, move on, nothing to see (today that is, they have already forgotten yesterday, just as most of the folks in SC will when the 100-year flood recedes).
Until I come back, here’s my favorite Arctic sea ice graphic. Not as catchy and understandable to the public as yours though (and the music is somber and perhaps even morbid rather than the “sad and ironic lament” I take from your composition). Now that you’ve got me looking at the “wallpaper”, using the north pole as the center of the polar coordinate graph may be confusing to some. They may be asking themselves “What’s the little bug doing running in circles around the Arctic like that?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUO23Y179pU
Did it take?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUO23Y179pU
Thanks DoG, it’s no small amount of work to produce, though it gets easier over the years as my computers increase in power and quantity!
You’ll find a few other versions of death spirals and waterfall diagrams in the video list on my youtube channel.
Time is getting nigh to update those too, though perhaps best at year’s end.
Funeral March is a bit too obvious, they should supply a free set of razorblades to go with the music!
Does that map mean that the entire volume of Arctic ice would make an ice cube that size? That doesn’t seem possible.
Why don’t you think it’s possible? Because it seems like too much to you?—or more likely too little? The base of those cubes is 15.9 miles on each edge, and they cover an area of 253 square miles, about 1/19 the area of Vermont and New Hampshire combined. The i979 MINIMUM volume would have covered VT and NH with over 1100 feet of ice, the maximum near 2000. Do the math.
Remember too that these are the minimum volumes, that the max volumes occur in April-May, and the max volumes have been in the 25,000 to 30,000 km3 range over the years Since the ice is only 2 to 3 meters thick, that’s a lot of ice surface when you spread it out, even though when piled up into a cube, it may not seem like much.
Thanks for sharing Peter! I made a special cover image for it this time and it looks a lot better.
Now approaching 1,000 views for the first day which is encouraging.
OK Finished mowing the lawn (and whacking mushrooms) and had time to figure out the alternative ice decline graphic. Andy’s design keeps the size of the cube’s base constant and shows changes in ice volume by changing the height. My idea was to instead keep the height constant at ~2.2 meters, the average Arctic ice thickness, and vary the size of the footprint of the ice on the ground—the opposite of Andy’s scheme. I thought that superimposing circles on a map of the U.S. with the center in Kansas might make it easier to visualize for those who have not been to NYC.
One thing I didn’t consider was that the size of a circle changes as an AREA function, the square of the radius, and that therefore the change in size wouldn’t be as noticeable as the straight up and down linear change of Andy’s cubes. The circles would be rather big also, with 1979 having a diameter of 1946 miles and 2015 having a diameter 0f 1113 miles.
Maybe in 5 or 10 years when the ice minimum gets way down it might be worth doing, because it would be pretty dramatic to see a “blob” that covered a large part of the U.S. in 1979 shrink to the size of Kansas in 2020 and Delaware in 2025 (and maybe even disappear), but Andy’s graphic gets it done for now.
I once debated some fool who kept insisting that sea ice was recovering by pointing out that sea ice extend was growing.
I tried to point out that if he really wanted to know how much ice had gone, he had to look at *volume* and not area.
That was flat out rejected by claiming that since PIOMAS was a “model” it couldn’t be trusted. – ignoring that it’s a hindcast model and thus not directly comparable to the “models” he hated.
At least wrt. this its relatively obvious that reality will hit this denier very hard at some point in the near future. It becomes increasingly hard to make lower and lower volumes stretch to the same area.
You know you’ve come across a science moron when they argue that sea ice extent is more significant than volume wrt global warming. I’ve had the same argument you had with your fool with my morons, and finally shut them up by talking about the ice that forms on the pond down the road.
I ask them if they go ice-skating the very first time they see some ice forming. They say “No”.
I ask “Why not?”
They say “Because it’s not safe”.
I ask “Why isn’t it safe?”
They say “Because the ice isn’t thick enough”.
I say “So you wouldn’t go out on thin ice on our pond, but you seem to think that a lot of thin ice in the Arctic is more significant than how thick it is?
(It usually takes a while for them to answer that last one).
You can see where this is going, but the morons DID finally figure out that having a thin skin of ice on the whole “pond” (extent) was meaningless, that thickness (volume) was more significant.
And as far as “It becomes increasingly hard to make lower and lower volumes stretch to the same area”, DO remember that it gets pretty damn cold in the polar regions, and ice will likely form there every winter long after summer sea ice is a long forgotten. Antarctic seasonal sea ice pretty much disappears every summer now. Seasonal ice is only 1-2 meters thick now, and even if it continues to warm it won’t disappear. Just be careful when you skate on it.
The same genius used to point at a graph of arctic mean temperature which barely goes above zero at any time in the year and ask: “How can the ice melt, if the temperature is always below zero”.
Well… first of all… that the mean temperature is below zero doesn’t mean that there’s not places with above zero temperature.
And…. there’s alway liquid water beneath the ice to melt it from below.
… but when the moron is dogmatic, such facts are just ignored.
The mean at the height of summer is actually just ABOVE zero, and, as you say, it rises above zero each day for long enough for some significant melting to occur. Your genius is a moron. In the depths of winter he probably says “It’s cold and snowing—there can’t be global warming”. Is his name Inhofe?
nope … But I have an “Inhofe” type guy too here in Denmark, which I would happily export if you need one. … not sure about his english skills though.
Extent is even less significant than those morons try to claim.
For the purpose of “extent”, portions of the Arctic ocean that is 15%, 50%, or 100% covered with sea ice are all considered to be equivalent.
The deniers & cooligans willfully ignore AREA as much as they do VOLUME.