Monday, December 30, 2013

Where Has All the Sea Ice Gone


It has been a pretty warm Fall in the Northern Hemisphere, and sea ice appear to be close to a record low for this time of year.  While IJIS is the Weasel's favorite, Cryosphere Today sea ice area is low, but not bottom of the chart, still sea ice growth has been slower than usual since September.  At first glance it looks like less ice in Baffin Bay and the Barents and Greenland Seas, and very little outside the Bering Strait.




13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess it's the soot from the book burning by Canada government.

The Old Man is back said...

This page is quite useful: https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/

William M. Connolley said...

The obvious thing about this year (including this autumn) is how much more ice there has been. Its interesting that its gone down now and over the last ~month.

Anonymous said...

You are supposed to be looking at Antarctica you dumb bunnies.

EliRabett said...

IEHO, the interesting thing this year has been the multiple sharp jogs in the sea ice area which, IEHO are a result of the thin ice suddenly appearing/disappearing making for shifts. YMMV

Anonymous said...


@ 31/12/13, 6:40 AM

Antarctica has dropped back out of record territory as well this December.

http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr2/extent_s_running_mean_amsr2_previous.png

Antarctic sea ice extent has been unusually large for virtually all of 2013, setting a number of date maximums or just failing to do so, spending all but the first 10 or so days above the 1973-2012 average. The graph has an oddly symmetrically and quite smooth shape, as well as a fairly large, nearly 4 month long excursion into record extent this past austral max ice season.

WhiteBeard

Anonymous said...

Tangential to this thread, but salient nevertheless.

Those of a fuzzy persuasion might be interested in Steve Sherwood's latest, hot off the press.

I'm hoping that he is wrong, but I suspect he's likely not. A few years ago I put up 3.4 °C as my best guess - perhaps I should have put serious money on it...


Bernard J.

Anonymous said...

A simple email by Rattus Norvegicus debunks Watts'/Coleman's whole 'stuck Antarctic scientists ask us for help' claim.

http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/01/anthony-watts-most-blessed-and-ethical.html

The fake skeptics were too busy with their Schadenfreude to even notice that the claims by Watts/Coleman simply did not add up.

Susan Anderson said...

meanwhile, fwiw, western Alaska has been in the 40s (or 8C+) for weeks.

And there's this interesting new SSW event:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+BradPanovich/posts/cvjvs3nSZGD

Just in case google plus doesn't work for you, perhaps this will give you a lead. Cold moving from north of Greenland to Lousiana and Alabama.

Something people don't seem to "get" is that in these cases the cold is leaving the Arctic, no kidding. Not good news to be colder down south in the circs.

Susan Anderson said...

sorry, missing extra link:

http://wxbrad.com/tag/sudden-stratospheric-warming/

Anonymous said...

I'm wondering (and frankly, very worried) about our friend Deep Climate, who had been working on sea ice extent at the end of 2012, a few months before DC went on hiatus, and was last heard from at the end of April 2013. DC's postings had become sporadic, as DC's readers had noticed, and it sounded as though DC had limited time to commit to on-going projects.

I sent an e-mail to DC a couple of months ago with well-wishes, but it went unanswered (although DC had answered my previous few inquiries).

I'm hoping this might only be the "muzzling of Canadian scientists" that DC had written about in the last open thread. That this scenario, which would be far from benign, is my hope, reflects the extent of my concern. If there's any news about DC that I'm unaware of, I'd very much appreciate being enlightened.

Taylor B

Unknown said...

Taylor,

Deep Climate is still active on Twitter at

https://twitter.com/deepclimate

You can DM him

Anonymous said...

Much appreciated, David!

Taylor B