Image Credit: National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC)
By WUWT Regular “Just The Facts”
Per the image above, Arctic Sea Ice Extent made a late season run, but it appears to have reached its maximum for the year. “NSIDC calculates daily extent using a five-day average of the data.” The “method takes the average of the previous five days, so that readers will see fewer “wiggles” in the tail end of the data series. The value of the trailing mean lags the actual data values, so sea ice values will appear lower when ice extent is increasing, but will appear larger when ice is decreasing.” NSIDC
JAXA’s Sea Ice Extent, which “is updated at around 3:00(UTC) every day” JAXA, shows a significant downward turn;
DMI’s Mean Temperature above 80°N has been running well above average;
and there is a another cold air outbreak headed into North America;
thus it is unlikely that we will see significant additional Arctic Sea Ice growth this season. Part of the reason for the relatively low Arctic Sea Ice Maximum this year is that several cold air outbreaks have occurred this winter, allowing cold air to escape the Arctic, e.g.;
resulting in second highest Great Lakes Sea Ice Coverage on record reaching 92.2% on March 6th, i.e.:
In the Southern Hemisphere, Sea Ice Area reached it’s 2nd highest Minimum on record on February 23rd, 2014, and somewhere in there lost its January rabbit ears;
resulting in a large area of Sea Ice now floating in the Southern Ocean:
Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area has now been above average for over 2 years and 4 months;
with the last negative anomaly recorded was on November 23rd, 2011, data here and graph below:
Global Sea Ice Area has remained stubbornly average over the last year and a quarter;
and Global Sea Ice Area Anomaly is currently just .083 Million sq km above the 1981 – 2010 average:
For additional information please visit the WUWT Sea Ice Page, Northern Regional Sea Ice Page and Great Lakes Ice Page.
The first thing you need to note is that Warmists themselves are the ones who often pick on single events to provide positive proof of their assertions.
Secondly a single storm is worth posting about bearing in mind that our host is a weatherman!!!! Come on now, WUWT is not owned by you or me. Think about it.
Snow White says:
So your oracle in such matters is Steven Goddard’s ludicrously misnamed “Real Science”, rather than the NSIDC or NORSEX? Surely you jest?
That is exactly the kind of response that we occasionally get here from someone who does not have any scientific evidence to support their position: total ad hominem bluster, with no redeeming scientific value. The bureaucrat links cited by Snow White show only natural climate variability, and nothing more.
I have provided numerous links to legitimate charts and graphs that thoroughly debunk the catastrophic AGW nonsense. I can provide many more. Hundreds, in fact, from every point of view and from multiple sources. I have also shown how NSIDC ‘adjusts’ the climate record, to support it’s wild-eyed Arctic scare story.
But as we see from Snow White’s religious-based Belief, none of it has the slightest impact. His/her mind is already made up, and closed tighter than a drumskin. No rational science is permitted entry, and any “facts” provided are carefully cherry-picked to support a conclusion that has already been decided upon.
dbstealey – I’ve made no mention of “natural climate variability” or “catastrophic AGW nonsense”. That’s seem to be something you have already decided upon.
I have asked you to provide a long term (lets say 30 years or more) graph for any measure of Arctic sea ice “quantity” showing anything other than a trend in the direction of the bottom right hand corner. You have so far failed to reveal one cherry, let alone “hundreds”.
Q.E.D.?
P.S. Inverting an axis doesn’t count!
Snow White needs to get up to speed on the Scientific Method: skeptics have nothing to prove.
Rather, the onus is on the alarmist crowd to provide scientific evidence showing that their CO2/cAGW conjecture is true. They have failed miserably.
But there is no scientific evidence supporting their belief in manmade global warming. None at all. Every last climate model has failed. They were all wrong.
The alarmist crowd is fixated on Arctic ice, instead of on global ice cover. Why? Because that is their last forlorn hope; every other climate scare has been debunked. Well, it’s time to debunk the ‘disappearing Arctic ice’ scare, too:
Global sea ice is at it’s 30-year average [the red graph – click in chart to embiggen]. We already know about the polar see-saw, in which the NH and SH poles balance each other out. That effect can be clearly seen in the global ice chart above.
There is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening. What we observe now has happened before, repeatedly, and to a much greater degree. Rational folks understand that. It is called the climate Null Hypothesis, and it has never been falsified. The Null Hypothesis is a corollary of the Scientific Method. So is the fact that the onus is on those who produce the catastrophic CO2/AGW conjecture, to suport their belief with scientific evidence.
But there is no evidence proving that Arctic ice is in unprecedented decline. None at all. There is no evidence to prove that the current Arctic ice fluctuation is anything other than natural climate variability. Occam’s Razor says that natural variability is by far the most likely explanation.
The Arctic ice scare is just the same as all the other climate scares. It is promoted by religious True Believers, who expect everyone to share in their Chicken Little panic.
But that only works on those who are ruled by emotion, and fright is an emotion. Scientific skeptics, OTOH, are logical, and therefore they are unaffected by the silly ‘Arctic ice’ scare.
dbstealey – So to summarise, you cannot muster a single chart to refute my assertion about Arctic sea ice decline, let alone “hundreds”.
For your edification, and for that of the writer of the original article who for some strange reason neglected to include a graph showing the long term trend in Arctic sea ice maximum extent, here is one I prepared earlier:
http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2014/03/watts-up-with-the-maximum-trend/#MaxExtent