Bet you didn't go through either the northwest or northeast passage.

Of course not, but come on, 5.8 million square kilometers of ice at the minimum and they couldn't find it? And only one number in an article and that an extreme. It is intended to lead the impressionable reader to think that large areas of 260 foot thick ice used to exist and are suddenly gone.

From cabrone's article:

"Scientists are also seeing more cyclones, which pick up force as they absorb heat from the warmer water. The cyclones help generate waves that break up ice sheets and also dump large amounts of snow, which has an insulating effect and prevents the ice sheets from thickening."

So the increase in snow fall in the fall and winter that more open water will cause will serve primarily to better insulate the ice and keep it from getting much thicker. The feedbacks do nearly all seem to be going in one direction.

The point of the rest of the article is one we haven't discussed much here--we don't have to wait for the Arctic to be ice free for it to be navigable through the winter. For commercial shipping purposes, the Arctic is now effectively ice free all year. I noted that they used the term "rotten" of the ice. So not only is it thin, but it is porous and weak, easily broken through by ships.

Will heavy ship traffic across the barely frozen ocean serve to further break up the ice in any significant way? Or is the area to vast to be significantly affected by any likely level of ship traffic?

Thats funny.. I don't care who you are that's funny right there!!!

The current ice chart for the western Canadian arctic coast. Note that as far as shipping goes just like traffic lights Green means go and Red means stop. Also note the distance fron Tuktoyaktuk to mulit year (Red)ice.
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/WIS56S ... 648295.gif

Always happy to provide entertainment for you, vt.

But as the Arctic cover steadily shrinks, any further disruption will start to have a larger relative impact. Right now the impact of shipping across ice is so infinitesimally small relative to the size of the ice sheet that it would be laughable to worry. But as ship traffic grows and the ice sheet shrinks, that will presumably change at some point.

But meanwhile:

Laugh While You Can, Monkey Boy

Aha but that's the point. The ice is not steadily shrinking. In fact for the last two years it has increased. Is this a new trend or just a blip in a warming trend? I don't know and I don't think anyone else does for sure. And no one ships anything of meaningful size across sea ice. Summer or winter. They wait for the ice to break up. Something to do with a little incident called the Titanic. Apparently two cargo ships used the north east passage this year while it was ice free and a few adventurers and research vessels went through the northwest passage but no great volume of cargo has yet to move by either route. Would Lloyds of London insure your venture if the arctic was your planned course? Perhaps if the warming trend resumes in a few years they can send out ships in July to pass through both NE and NW passages in August and early September but it will be a long while before the season is longer then six weeks. That darn sun just keeps setting on the parade.

"And no one ships anything of meaningful size across sea ice. "

Of course they have not so far, but have you not seen the many articles posted here and elsewhere about all the countries and industries salivating of the chance for sea lanes to open up across the Arctic. The point is that the Arctic does not have to be ice free to be navigable. Universally thin ice means there are no titanic-sized icebergs (except perhaps those calving off Greenland?).

I do suspect that we may see some increase in ice extent as all the old ice that had decades and more of black carbon (that has been a major driver of the Arctic melt) embedded in its snow disappears. It's now a whole new ball game, very hard to know what will happen in any given year. There is no indication that GW is going to go away any time soon, but the Arctic has been so far ahead of the rest of the world, it could, I suppose, pause in its rate of increased temps. Most of the feed back loops I can find, though, are pointing toward continued warming and so presumably continues shrinking and thinning of the sea ice (though the thinning process has no gone about as fer as it could go, apparently).

So of course, it is a truism that no one knows what is going to happen. But we do see strong trends toward long term melting. If you think that trend is likely to reverse itself, I'm sure we would all be interested in what you think is likely to cause such a reversal.

(double post)

On another front, here's another nail in the coffin of those claiming that what is going on in the arctic is merely natural variation:

link

Not being a member of the merchant marine I don't know for sure but I think that 15% ice coverage is the limit for a cargo ship to proceed without an ice breaker escort and then only at reduced speeds with double watches. Any sizable flow of sheet ice can slice a hull moving at speed. No berg required. That's why the Canadian charts use green for coverage of 10 to 30 percent. You cannot ship OVER ice. You have to wait until you can get through it with ice breakers but to be profitable you need open water. As to the feed back loops and reinforcing that is often theorised to accelerate melting, what happened to them in 2007? Why did that dramatic minimum not kick in every feedback loop and accelerate melting in' 08 and '09. Perhaps the theories are wrong or at least significantly off. Whatever kept these feedback loops from kicking in may save us yet. I hope so anyway.

how much money are you betting on your hope V??

We already have the future of the human race bet on it. Isn't that enough.

Too bad the vast majority of the human race doesn't know what the bet really is about, and how bad things could be if we have bet wrong.

The powers that be both in government and the corporate owned MSM make sure they never get the whole truth, nor have a real say in how the bet is actually being make, supposedly in their name.

Thanks for the info on shipping. Is this based on your casual conversations with sailors, or do you have a confirmatory link? In general, though, these practices were based on times when there was a lot of old ice and you couldn't know where it was. So prudence would dictate that you avoid the risk of bumping into it. The original article talks about most of the existing ice as being not only new and thin but "rotten" (I believe that was the word), which I take to mean very thin and porous. It sounded as though they had no trouble moving through it pretty fast.

I share your hope that there are some phantom negative feedbacks waiting in the wings to save us from our own sorry *sses. I would fell more comfortable knowing if there was good understanding of such feedbacks.

Thinning, of course, did continue after 2007, even if coverage didn't. I don't really expect any feedback to have consistent effects every year. Year-to-year data of just about any type is essentially static, something that is easily overlooked by both sides.