From The Australian, 12 May 2014
Graham Lloyd
Antarctic sea ice has expanded to record levels for April, increasing by more than 110,000sq km a day last month to nine million square kilometres.
The National Snow and Ice Data Centre said the rapid expansion had continued into May and the seasonal cover was now bigger than the record “by a significant margin’’.
“This exceeds the past record for the satellite era by about 320,000sq km, which was set in April 2008,’’ the centre said.
Increased ice cover in Antarctic continues to be at odds with falling Arctic ice levels, where the summer melt has again pushed levels well below the average extent for 1981-2010. The centre said while the rate of Arctic-wide retreat was rapid through the first half of April, it had slowed.
The April Arctic minimum was 270,000sq km higher than the record April low, which occurred in 2007. The Antarctic sea ice extent anomalies were greatest in the eastern Weddell and along a long stretch of coastline south of Australia and the southeastern Indian Ocean. The centre said the increased ice extent in the Weddell Sea region appeared to be associated with a broad area of persistent easterly winds in March and April, and lower-than-average temperatures.
Full story at the Australian, here. h/t to The GWPF
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Here are some current plots of Antarctic Sea Ice from the WUWT Sea Ice Page
Antarctic Sea Ice Extent – 15% or Greater
National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) – Click the pic to view at source
Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Extent With Anomaly
National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) – Click the pic to view at source
Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area Anomaly
Cryosphere Today – Arctic Climate Research at the University of Illinois – Click the pic to view at source
Despite this news, JPL has just released this alarmist drivel:
“A new study by researchers at NASA and the University of California, Irvine, finds a rapidly melting section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appears to be in an irreversible state of decline, with nothing to stop the glaciers in this area from melting into the sea.”
See more here: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-148
Yeah but the wind ate the Antarctic warming, waaaaah !!
We all love polar sea ice that’s why we pray for it all to melt, as in ……
“I love animals. That’s why I like to kill ’em”, Hank Spim, Monty Python’s Flying Circus
No doubt “they” will figure out a way to blame this on “climate disruption.”
But but but but!!!!
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/huge-antarctic-ice-sheet-collapsing-1.2639989
Just kidding… The CBC are idiots that answer to Suzuki…
apparently the Western Ice Sheet will be gone by today 7pm GMT:
http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-west-antarctic-ice-sheet-results-2014-5
Damn, it’s 19:05, no wonder the sea is 4 feet higher today
It’s all that rapid melting taking place at -54° that’s causing ice to appear hundreds of miles off shore.
goodbye summer….
…hello winter
All of those poor penguins now have a much farther march to make from their breeding ground in the interior to their feeding ground on the coast. We better get some global warming soon, or they’re all going to die.
Just a reminder about albedo….
If this were the Arctic…it would be covering half of canada and all of Alaska…all year round
There are some amazing phenomena going on right now….ports in Lake Superior are still impeded by ice from last winter! http://www.rivertowns.net/content/first-saltie-needs-help-through-ice-0
The 1,344,000 sq. km anomaly is nearly twice the size of Texas. Nothing to see here…move along.
Just wait until the extreme human phenomena kick in later this decade. I foresee a heck of a lot of dust and radionucleides being foisted skyward.
Tomorrow we will have an article that says record low ice levels and polar bears at risk!
what did I tell you?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/12/claim-the-southern-ocean-winds-are-now-stronger-than-at-any-other-time-in-the-past-1000-years-co2-blamed/#comment-1634266
My Penguins certainly died last night. Gads, that was an ugly game.
According to warmist blog trolls with limited scripts, this ice extent is just a lot of slush coming of a rapidly collapsing ice shelf (continent). By this characterization any amateur climate science voyage should be able to ply the slush fields and get in close to witness the final demise of the main ice fields. Good luck with that script.
Right, but what do we get in the freaking news: Gobal warming is making the earth earth to expand, melting ice is altering shape of the planet.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2626243/Is-climate-change-making-Earth-EXPAND-Melting-ice-sheets-altering-shape-planet.html
Ryan says:
“A new study by researchers at NASA and the University of California, Irvine, finds a rapidly melting section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appears to be in an irreversible state of decline, with nothing to stop the glaciers in this area from melting into the sea.”
The article indicates that this “new” study used radar observations captured between 1992 and 2011. Antarctic sea ice has been growing greatly since 2011. I wonder how this affects the “irreversible state of decline”?
Now let’s see how big this record is going to get. We’ll know more in a few months.
Can’t wait for the next expedition looking for melting ice.
But how many Manhattans is that?
The bipolar seesaw has started marking the start of the descent towards the next glaciation.
It will be interesting to see how large a part of that descent will be described as global warming, and with what inventiveness.
Does this mean that the forecast Great Cooling has started?
The other interesting place to watch is the multi-year ice in the Arctic. It seems to have bottomed out and increased some. The climate is changing with our 17 year surface temperature standstill and the cryosphere at ‘normal’.
Alas, they will keep on pointing to a crumbling section of ice sheet here and a retreating glacier there to prove global warming is worse than we thought.
Serious question….
Conventional wisdom on ice-albedo feedback would be that:
A) as the planet warms (especially in high-latitudes), polar ice extent should shrink
B) reduced ice extent would lower the surface albedo.
C) more absorbed sunlight (increased forcing) would increase temperatures.
D) Go to A. (i.e. positive feedback).
One assumes that this conventional wisdom would be the basis for feedback in climate models.
But recently, Antarctic sea ice doesn’t seem to be cooperating with conventional wisdom. (Which doesn’t mean it won’t behave more “normally” in the future.)
Greater ice extent in the face of rising temperatures, turns the ice-albedo feedback mechanism on its head, flipping it from a positive feedback, to a negative feedback, at least in the southern hemisphere.
Could this explain the divergence between models and observations, as well as the gap in their estimates of sensitivity?
At the same time the New York Times writes about the coming disaster of a splintering Antarctica. Do they even compare different studies or just print what comes first?