http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

Since the comparison to 2005 was the central theme of your blog post I hope you will note this for your readers.

Also, as you know, comparing data points from a couple of nearly adjacent years can not be expected to show the greenhouse effect. If you or your readers want to see how the current year compares to long term averages, I suggest that you use the graph on the NSIDC website at

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png

This graph gives current year, record year and average from 1979-2000. I have found that students understand this graph without giving the change in consecutive years more weight than it deserves.

Also I don’t think any climatologists would agree that the data from 2005-2009 can be used to say anything about climate.

This summer Arctic sea ice shrank to only 1.97 square miles (5.1 million square kilometers). The 2009 drop is still the third largest on record, but it’s not as big as some scientists had feared. (Explore a vanishing sea-ice interactive.)

Arctic sea ice typically shrinks in the summer and grows in the winter. It typically reaches its lowest coverage around mid-September.

One-Year Reprieve

Meier cautions the new findings do not mean the Arctic is in recovery, or that global warming is slowing down.

“I look at it as a one-year reprieve,” he said. “I don’t expect that to continue.”

For one thing, this year’s ice is thinner than in the past, and thus more vulnerable to future melt.

“If we get another really warm summer,” Meier said, “we’ll probably be back to where we were in 2007.”
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….and there was silly old me thinking that Walt could stop bed-wetting this year.

Don’t you love the typo though ?? 1.97 square miles. That’s a pretty small area for the entire population of drowning polar bears to cling on to.

Agree with every word.

Why have the grid operators not gone on TV (or the media) and said what their problems and concerns are? Are they being paid not to tell??

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This is a great fallacy.

In actual fact, Denmark has NEVER used ANY of its wind electricity – it is too variable and unreliable. It sells it to Scandinavia instead.

http://www.thomastelford.com/journals/DocumentLibrary/CIEN.158.2.66.pdf

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I’ve wonder about this too. Perhaps it’s something to do with the fact that the temperature of the sea surface will tend to plateau at just below it’s freezing point, so air temperature will rebound. Could also be something to do with the Arctic vortex, which speeds up as temperatures fall. If you look through other years it’s not a rare event.