Talkshop commenter ‘Caleb’ has alerted me to an unusual event; Joe Romm approved one of my comments on his blog at Think Progress. Intrigued, I went to see, and found that not only had Joe approved my comment, but replied to it with the offer of some free money. I’ll gladly take up the offer of a wager Joe, subject to the agreement of terms. Since Joe has been kind enough to offer the wager, I’ll let him have first shot at defining what he means by “the last throes of the death spiral.” So far as the size of the wager is concerned, I’m not a rich man, so the limit for me is $3000. How about it Joe?
Tong Jian and Pang Qing perform the ‘Death Spiral’ at the 2010 Ice Skating Championship
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tallbloke says:
A recent paleo modelling paper concluded the temperature of the upper arctic ocean was about 2C warmer than present near the last glacial maximum. Presumably this would be because the ice cap prevented the heat being lost to space.
So less summer ice will mean more heat loss to space from the Arctic ocean. This seems like a natural negative feedback to me. The increased ocean heat content of the last 80 years has to find a way out of the system. It does that by melting Arctic ice and gaining direct access to radiate into the troposphere. Once the ocean has cooled down, the Arctic ice will increase again.
The world ocean started cooling around 2007, and given the momentum of the circulation systems, I would expect the Arctic ocean to lag by a decade or so. I predict signs of Arctic ice recovery starting around 2015, and becoming stronger around 2017-2019.
Plenty of time for hollering and hooting meanwhile.
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Joe Romm says:
Care to make a wager on that? I say it’ll be obvious in the 2015 to 2019 time frame the ice is in the last throes of the death spiral.
BTW, the world ocean hasn’t started cooling at all. And all that heat doesn’t end up in space. A lot of it ends up driving the extreme weather we’ve been seeing.
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Hmmm, well, I wonder if the latest arctic ice extent map will have given Joe any pause for thought:
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Trenberth’s missing heat may be hiding in the extreme weather, not in deep oceans.
CG: Well, that’s what Joe says. But then, this is the quietest hurricane season on record…
Clean him out. Raise your donations (i’ll give some €) and let’s see if he and his backers have the guts to go with the bullshit.
I expect Joe will be well funded to pay any bets off.
Stephen, Good man yourself! Speak up Joe, money where mouth is.
[…] Apparently “Tallbloke” was surprised Joe Romm printed his comment. It resulted in a post over at “Tallbloke’s Talkshop.” https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/joe-romm-arctic-recovery-or-death-spiral-care-to-make-a-wa… […]
How about this for a criterion? Using data for the September average aice extent (ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Sep/N_09_area.txt), we can calculate the average and the standard deviation for the period 2007-2012:
AVG: 4.60 million km^2
SD: 0.60 million km^2
One simple criterion would be +/- 1 SD. So “recovery” would be at least 4.6 + 0.5 = 5.2 million km^2 (and “strong recovery” would be 4.6 + 2*0.6 = 5.8 million km^2). Similarly, “continued decline” would be 4.6 – 0.6 = 4.0 million km^2, while “strong decline” would be 4.6 – 2*0.6 = 3.4 million km^2.
Wait for 2019 and then calculate the average for that period.
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Actually, I just thought of a more robust test — a statistical t-test. Compare the data from 2007-2012 with data from 2015+. Any year when we calculate a p=0.05 confidence that the ice has increased will be a victory for Tallbloke. Any year when we calculate a p=0.05 confidence that the ice has decreased will be a victory for Joe. If neither happens by 2019, it is a draw.
For example, a pair of results of 5.2 and 5.3 million km^2 would be a victory for Tallbloke.
4.3, 3.9, 3.7, 3.9 would be a victory for Joe.
(You could also decrease the acceptable p value (perhaps p = 0.01) to be more sure. then a pair of years above 5.6 or below 3.6 would show the recovery/death spiral)
Maybe this helps?
Instead of money, why not have the winner write an article – which would not be subject to any kind of editorial control, within reason – on the losers web site?
ren: interesting plot again, thanks. The Arctic ice seems to be holding up well this year despite a warm Arctic ocean nibbling at it’s edges and sitting under it. As I told Joe Romm, I expect that high ocean anomaly to start dissipating over the next few years. Time will tell.
Here’s a polar ice picture worth a look:
http://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/images/4-mars/2013/20130810_mars_polar_mex_jul13.jpg
You won’t find much about this on fanatical warmist websites.
South American countries gripped by snow (30/8/13)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23907186
Jim Steele’s take on bad science behind ‘extreme weather’ claims
http://landscapesandcycles.net/fabricating-climate-doom—part-3–extreme-weather.html
Can I get a piece of the action?
If you want to bet money, bet on the AMO. Rule of thumb is, when it spikes up warm, less ice. When it spikes down cold, more ice.
Last year on WUWT they showed a cache of old arctic extent maps, (which had been conveniently forgotten about.) They showed that the last time the AMO went warm, 1936-1963, the ice dwindled away in the arctic. What was interesting to me was that there was this unusual, brief spike to a cold AMO 1939-1940, and the ice came back fast that year. Apparently it isn’t hard at all to regrow the ice.
Me, too!
Sorry. The last time the AMO went warm was 1926-1963, not 1936-1963.
Caleb: Even earlier, newspaper report from 1923 noted the retreat of the ice.
Just remember to make it part of the rules that the stake monies are held by a disinterested third party with clear instructions on when and who to pay.
Because….
Now it is a month later, and Mr. Romm must be irked by the come-back of the ice.
I have taken your idea of the possibility open water can cause the Arctic Sea to lose heat, and expanded upon it in my posts about views seen through polar cameras, the most recent of which is at http://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2013/10/05/arctic-sea-ice-recovery-diary-the-deepening-twilight/
However, if you want to spare yourself my verbose prose, I highly recommend the views seen through the polar camera O-buoy #7. It only takes ten minutes to watch a year of ice freezing, melting, and reforming.
The film from minute-nine on is best. The camera is tlted and watching the ice at its feet erode and refreeze, erode and refreeze, and then, just when you think the refreeze will win, a storm topples the camera. Then, likely because the superstructure acts as a sail, it moves south away from the ice into open ocean for a couple days. Then the wind switches to the south, and it moves back to the edge of the ice, which consumes it like an ameoba, thickens, attempts to thaw and crack up, but then refreezes and is snowed under.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, this single ten minute film clip may be worth a thousand scientific papers. I hope your busy schedule gives you ten minutes to just sit back and enjoy what nature does, oblivious of politics.
http://obuoy.datatransport.org/monitor#buoy7/movie
Love the Obuoy! Bookmarked.
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