I’ve written a few posts about the Arctic sea ice extent. It was a popular topic with those who deny global warming for a short time in May, when the ice extent was for a short while around the long-term average. But then it dropped away again.
The National Snow & Ice Data Center has just reported that we appear to have seen the minimum sea ice extent for this year:
The 2009 minimum is the third-lowest recorded since 1979, 580,000 square kilometers (220,000 square miles) above 2008 and 970,000 square kilometers (370,000 square miles) above the record low in 2007.
I’ll be interested to see whether anyone is silly enough to spin that as “Arctic sea ice has been rising since 2007.” But as the NSIDC notes:
This year, the minimum extent did not fall as low as the minimums of the last two years, because temperatures through the summer were relatively cooler. The Chukchi and Beaufort seas were especially cool compared to 2007. Winds also tended to disperse the ice pack over a larger region.
While the ice extent this year is higher than the last two years, scientists do not consider this to be a recovery. Despite conditions less favorable to ice loss, the 2009 minimum extent is still 24% below the 1979-2000 average, and 20% below the thirty-year 1979-2008 average minimum. In addition, the Arctic is still dominated by younger, thinner ice, which is more vulnerable to seasonal melt. The long-term decline in summer extent is expected to continue in future years.
The minimum extent is still falling more than two standard deviations below the mean, and the linear trend is still clearly downward.
6 Comments
Ding ding!
To be fair, I think Watts is saying we’ve reached the minimum for the year – his previous sentence is about an increase for the second day in a row.
But some of his commenters are a different story:
etc.
It often depends on the source of the news as to the slant of the opinion.
This from the BBC on Antarctic melting.
Then there’s this from News Ltd. in April.
And then again, there’s this from The Oz in Jan 2008.
In the middle of the News.Ltd link is the mixed-up appreciation of the difference between sea-ice and glacial ice. It’s no wonder people get confused.
except that Watts uses a Bolt-like sentence about sea ice rising, without qualifying the overall trend – clearly misrepresentating the true picture, which is why the comments are what they are IMO. This is typical presentation of climate data by so-called sceptics.
**phew** Thank God the sea ice started shrinking again … us on the global warming hysteria side were starting to worry we were running out of evidence …