Multi-year Arctic ice posts a large gain, peak ice occurred later this year. Antarctica had fourth highest minimum.
From NSIDC: Arctic sea ice at fifth lowest annual maximum
Arctic sea ice reached its annual maximum extent on March 21, after a brief surge in extent mid-month. Overall the 2014 Arctic maximum was the fifth lowest in the 1978 to 2014 record. Antarctic sea ice reached its annual minimum on February 23, and was the fourth highest Antarctic minimum in the satellite record. While this continues a strong pattern of greater-than-average sea ice extent in Antarctica for the past two years, Antarctic sea ice remains more variable year-to-year than the Arctic.
Overview of conditions
Arctic sea ice extent for March 2014 averaged 14.80 million square kilometers (5.70 million square miles). This is 730,000 square kilometers (282,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average extent, and 330,000 square kilometers (127,000 square miles) above the record March monthly low, which happened in 2006. Extent remains slightly below average in the Barents Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk, but is at near-average levels elsewhere. Extent hovered around two standard deviations below the long-term average through February and early March. The middle of March by contrast saw a period of fairly rapid expansion, temporarily bringing extent to within about one standard deviation of the long-term average.
Conditions in context
In the Arctic, the maximum extent for the year is reached on average around March 9. However, the timing varies considerably from year to year. This winter the ice cover continued to expand until March 21, reaching 14.91 million square kilometers (5.76 million square miles), making it both the fifth lowest maximum and the fifth latest timing of the maximum since 1979. The latest timing of the maximum extent was on March 31, 2010 and the lowest maximum extent occurred in 2011 (14.63 million square kilometers or 5.65 million square miles).
March 2014 compared to previous years
Average ice extent for March 2014 was the fifth lowest for the month in the satellite record. Through 2014, the linear rate of decline for March ice extent is 2.6% per decade relative to the 1981 to 2010 average.
An increase in multiyear ice
The extent of multiyear ice within the Arctic Ocean is distinctly greater than it was at the beginning of last winter. During the summer of 2013, a larger fraction of first-year ice survived compared to recent years. This ice has now become second-year ice. Additionally, the predominant recirculation of the multiyear ice pack within the Beaufort Gyre this winter and a reduced transport of multiyear ice through Fram Strait maintained the multiyear ice extent throughout the winter.
In Figure 4, Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) imagery reveals the distribution of multiyear ice compared to first year ice for March 28, 2013 (yellow line) and March 2, 2014 (blue line). The ASCAT sensor measures the radar–frequency reflection brightness of the sea ice at a few kilometers resolution. Sea ice radar reflectivity is sensitive to the roughness of the ice and the presence of saltwater droplets within newer ice (and, later in the season, the presence of surface melt). Thus older and more deformed multiyear ice appears white or light grey (more reflection), whereas younger, first-year ice looks dark grey and/or black.
Ice age tracking confirms large increase in multiyear ice
Satellite data on ice age reveal that multiyear ice within the Arctic basin increased from 2.25 to 3.17 million square kilometers (869,000 to 1,220,000 square miles) between the end of February in 2013 and 2014. This winter the multiyear ice makes up 43% of the icepack compared to only 30% in 2013. While this is a large increase, and may portend a more extensive September ice cover this year compared to last year, the fraction of the Arctic Ocean consisting of multiyear ice remains less than that at the beginning of the 2007 melt season (46%) when a large amount of the multiyear ice melted. The percentage of the Arctic Ocean consisting of ice at least five years or older remains at only 7%, half of what it was in February 2007. Moreover, a large area of the multiyear ice has drifted to the southern Beaufort Sea and East Siberian Sea (north of Alaska and the Lena River delta), where warm conditions are likely to exist later in the year.
Summer ice extent remains hard to predict
There is a growing need for reliable sea ice predictions. An effort to gather and summarize seasonal sea ice predictions made by researchers and prediction centers began in 2008. The project, known as the SEARCH Sea Ice Outlook, has collected more than 300 predictions of summer month ice extent. A new study published in Geophysical Research Letters by researchers at NSIDC, University of New Hampshire, and University of Washington reveal a large range in predictive skill. The study found that forecasts are quite accurate when sea ice conditions are close to the downward trend that has been observed in Arctic sea ice for the last 30 years. However, forecasts are not so accurate when sea ice conditions are unusually higher or lower compared to this trend. Results from the study also suggest that while ice conditions during the previous winter are an important predictor (such as the fraction of first-year versus multiyear ice), summer weather patterns also have a large impact on the amount of ice that will be left at the end of summer.
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In reply to:
“While this continues a strong pattern of greater-than-average sea ice extent in Antarctica for the past two years, Antarctic sea ice remains more variable year-to-year than the Arctic.”
William:
The sudden change in the Antarctic sea ice supports the assertion that the Arctic sea ice will recover and will reach record levels.
The NSIDC polar sea ice summary attempts to brush away the fact that there has been a significant sudden change in the Antarctic sea ice extent with the statement “continues a strong pattern of greater-than-average sea ice extent in [the] Antarctic for the past two years” by appealing to natural variability without a cause, ignoring the paleo record that unequivocally shows cycles of warming everyone of which was followed by cooling, and ignoring the fact that Antarctic sea extent has increased 2013-2014 over 2012-2013.
There is now two sigma higher Antarctic sea ice for every month of the year.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
There is a physical reason (a forcing function) why the planet cyclically warmed and cooled (both hemispheres) in the past. The mechanism that caused the cyclic warming and cooling in the past must be capable of affecting both poles simultaneously, which rules out ocean currents and other natural internal climate forcing mechanisms. The past warming and cooling cycles were not caused by changes in atmospheric CO2.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/davis-and-taylor-wuwt-submission.pdf
Davis and Taylor: “Does the current global warming signal reflect a natural cycle”
William: Is the warming and cooling cycle (342 cycles, period 500 years, 1000 years, and 1500 years, until the limit of the proxy record is reached) sometimes abrupt cooling, caused by solar magnetic cycle changes and a change to the sun that is the fundamental cause of the solar magnetic cycle and is the cause of abrupt climate change on the earth? Yes.
…We found 342 natural warming events (NWEs) corresponding to this definition, distributed over the past 250,000 years …. …. The 342 NWEs contained in the Vostok ice core record are divided into low-rate warming events (LRWEs; < 0.74oC/century) and high rate warming events (HRWEs; ≥ 0.74oC /century) (Figure). … ….The current global warming signal is therefore the slowest and among the smallest in comparison with all HRWEs in the Vostok record, although the current warming signal could in the coming decades yet reach the level of past HRWEs for some parameters. The figure shows the most recent 16 HRWEs in the Vostok ice core data during the Holocene, interspersed with a number of LRWEs. …. ….We were delighted to see the paper published in Nature magazine online (August 22, 2012 issue) reporting past climate warming events in the Antarctic similar in amplitude and warming rate to the present global warming signal. The paper, entitled "Recent Antarctic Peninsula warming relative to Holocene climate and ice – shelf history" and authored by Robert Mulvaney and colleagues of the British Antarctic Survey ( Nature , 2012, doi:10.1038/nature11391),reports two recent natural warming cycles, one around 1500 AD and another around 400 AD, measured from isotope (deuterium) concentrations in ice cores bored adjacent to recent breaks in the ice shelf in northeast Antarctica. ….
Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper. William: As this paper shows there has been 9 warming and cooling periods in the last 11,000 years, on the Greenland ice sheet. The late Gerald Bond was able to track 23 warming and cooling cycles (500 years, 1000 years, and 1500 years cycle same period as found in the Southern hemisphere data) in the Northern hemisphere by the analysis of ocean floor sediments which is the limit of that proxy data source.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
The Great Lakes are NOT included in the NSIDC’s sea ice extents.
The Antarctic ice shelves (approximately 1.3 Mkm^2) are NOt included in the Antarctic sea ice extents numbers either.
At its yearly maximum of 14.5 – 15.0 Mkm^2, the Arctic sea ice extents is very closely approximated by a “cap” across the Arctic Ocean, reaching from the pole at 90 north down to a latitude of 70.6 Mkm^2.
At its recent minimums of “only” 4 Mkm^2 in mid-September, the Arctic sea ice extents is confined to a very tiny area between the pole and only 80 north. At that time of year near the equinox, the sun – even at noon! – is less than 20 degrees above the horizon.
So, on the same days that the southernmost edge of the Arctic sea ice is only exposed to 125 watt/m^2 at noon, every square meter of that 1.8 Mkm^2 “excess” Antarctic sea ice is radiated by over 530 watts/m^2!
So, what is more important? Well, that 125 watts hitting the ocean surface, the “dark” Arctic ocean waters are absorbing 90 watts/m^2; yet the Antarctic sea ice is reflecting 419 watts/m^2 of the 530 watts hitting it back into space.
Seems like that a ratio of 4.6:1 is relevant.
We can lose ALL of today’s Arctic sea ice and STILL be rapidly cooling the planet due to the excess Antarctic sea ice.
It’s entertaining watching the Guardian trying to cherry pick the ‘bad’ news about the March extent. I was on the comment thread and gave them a good kicking, but alas finally got banned again this morning. They didn’t like my inconvenient facts, references and pointing out the failed prediction of Wieslaw Maslowski for 2013 ice free Arctic. They attempted a rebuttal and I rebutted back about Professor Peter Wadhams’ looming failed prediction. I also mention Arctic ice volume up.
No mention of volume. No mention of the late spurt in March. No mention that using the March extent to predict the summer minimum is a crap shoot. I showed them a graph showing the problem with this.
RACookPE1978 says:
April 3, 2014 at 6:15 am
Just to remind everyone:
Just the Antarctic sea ice extents ANOMALY alone last October was larger than Hudson’s Bay. At 1.8 Mkm^2, it was a little larger than half the size of Greenland! The edge of this excess Antarctic sea ice was right at 58 – 59 south latitude, or closer to the equator than ANY Arctic sea ice ever is at ANY time of year.
That was the EXCESS Antarctic sea ice!
The Antarctic sea ice extents anomaly has been steadily and consistently increasing since May 2010. If this increase continues at this consistent 4-1/2 year rate, the Antarctic sea ice will be blocking the Straits of Magellan and the shipping routes around Cape Horn within 8-10 years.
Except of course that’s not where the ‘excess Antarctic sea ice’ is!
The Antarctic sea ice area anomaly at the maximum was ~0.6Mkm^2, the anomaly was mostly negative during 2011. In recent years the Arctic sea ice area anomaly has exceeded -1Mkm^2 regularly and at times exceeded -2Mkm^2.
I also note that the Guardian did NOT link to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. It was written by no other than Suzanne Goldenberg. The bias of the Guardian is quite astonishing. You would think they would want to report good news!@ur momisugly#$% The fact is it is not about wanting good news or about the science, it’s about using co2 to change the energy structure of the world and insert the Guardians ideological beliefs into as much of our lives as possible.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/apr/02/arctic-sea-ice-fall-lowest-levels
Suzanne Goldenberg is the one who made up the fairy tale about America’s first climate refugees. At that time I registerd as a commenter and thrashed her, and pointed out they could not possibly be America’s first climate refugees such as droughts which lasted 100s of years, other climate refugees from the 1950s etc.
They used to insist that multi-year ice was most important, until it wasn’t. 😉 LOL. That graph looks like a small uptick for multi-year in recent years.
They know that the Arctic is one of the few hands they have left. Volume and extent growth would be a very serious wound indeed.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/apr/02/arctic-sea-ice-fall-lowest-levels
Incredible ! More bullshit from Goldberg at the Guardian, she manages to spin the recovery since 2006 into a “death spiral”. Then lies about what the NSIDC report says.
You skeptics will all be eating crow when I kayak to the North Pole this summer….I have picked out my kayak. It is on lay-away at Walmart right now…
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Sevylor-1-Person-Sport-Kayak/16474563
[Reply: You need something more appropriate. WUWT will grubstake your N. Pole trip:
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Poolmaster-Pirate-Boat/25864346
~mod]
Chris @NJSnowFan says:
My lines are not all perfect placement but shows a good connection.
Maybe someone else can make some better charts.
…
More data is needed to improve my theory.
===
As far as I can see you have not produced any “charts” so far, you appear to photoshopped someone else’s graphs on top of each other and drawn some dubious lines by hand.
You don’t need more data, you need _some_ data. When you have _some_ data you will be able to plot it and show us what you’ve got.
It looks interesting, I suggest you do it.
A common theme we continue to see in these ice posts is that arctic ice extent is much more about surface wind patterns than it is about arctic air temps. My conclusion is ice extent has very little if anything to do with any warming caused by CO2 (but substantially influenced by wind & ocean currents , which in turn may effect year to year “global” temperatures).
Er, uhm, what? You are dead wrong.
1. Please, “you” are trying to confuse the issue by using Antarctic sea ice “area” to compare to my consistent use of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extents. Area will ALWAYS be less than extents, so your comment is invalid and (deliberately) misleading.
2. The “excess” Antarctic sea ice extents IS at the northern edge of the entire Antarctic ice area.
14.0 Mkm^2 of land-based ice.
1.3 Mkm^2 of fixed ice shelves – These are NOT included in the NSIDC’s “sea ice” totals.
19.6 Mkm^2 of varying sea ice extents.
Total Antarctic ice = 37.1 Mkm^2 at maximum in mid-to-late September each year.
That puts the edge of the Antarctic sea ice at 58-59 south latitude.
Now, where the blazing ice-caps does your arithmetic claim any increase in Antarctic sea is going to be?
3. You CANNOT compare “extents” or “areas” of the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice! THEY ARE NOT AT EQUAL LATITUDES at ANY DAY-OF-YEAR. Over the course of the year, the Antarctic sea ice extents is exposed to roughly 3.1 TIMES as much sunlight as is the Arctic sea ice extents. By your logic, a gain on the Antarctic could be “matched” by an equal loss of area in the Arctic.
Wrong!
The edge of the Antarctic sea ice at maximum in September and October each year – that sea ice area that IS expanding and HAS BEEN continually expanding since May 2010 – is exposed to 5x the radiation than is hitting the southern most edge of the Arctic sea ice. Each square kilometer of “excess” Antarctic sea needs to be matched by a loss of 4.6 square kilometers of Arctic sea ice just to keep the planet from getting colder!
(Even near the spring equinox, when the Arctic sea ice extents is nearing maximum and the Antarctic sea ice extents is at its yearly minimum, the two ice caps are receiving equal solar radiation. It is not until the first week in April that the arctic sea ice is finally exposed to more sunlight than is the edge of the Antarctic sea ice. Over the arctic summer, the northern sea ice is being hit by ever-less solar energy at the TOA, getting the lowest solar energy on July 5 each year at only 1310 watts/m^2 at TOA. But over the northern winter, when the Arctic sea ice is in total darkness yet the solar radiation is at its highest, that “excess” Antarctic sea ice is hit by the southern sun 18 – 24 hours a day.)
4. Worse, any “loss” of Arctic sea ice you seem to fear so much from today’s extents means even MORE heat energy is lost from the open ocean than is gained by the little bit of added heat absorbed by the open water! The open Arctic ocean LOSES more energy every 24 hour day from the end of August through the beginning of April by increased evaporation, increased conduction losses, increased radiation losses and increased convection losses than what is gained in the few hours of sunlight hitting the water surface at low angles.
Increased Arctic sea ice extents loss? Increased arctic ocean heat loss.
Increased Antarctic sea ice extents gain? Increased amount of solar energy reflected back uselessly into space.
Do you disagree? Please, show us your math for each heat gain method, each heat loss.
RACookPE1978 says:
April 3, 2014 at 7:10 am
At its recent minimums of “only” 4 Mkm^2 in mid-September, the Arctic sea ice extents is confined to a very tiny area between the pole and only 80 north. At that time of year near the equinox, the sun – even at noon! – is less than 20 degrees above the horizon.
So, on the same days that the southernmost edge of the Arctic sea ice is only exposed to 125 watt/m^2 at noon, every square meter of that 1.8 Mkm^2 “excess” Antarctic sea ice is radiated by over 530 watts/m^2!
Except for the purpose of your comparison it’s the open water that used to be covered by Arctic sea ice in September that counts, and your Antarctic insolation value is grossly erroneous. And for both polar regions, a wavelength-weighted albedo of ~0.5 is more appropriate than the 0.72 and 0.79 you use for Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, respectively.
Average daily insolation, September 15
75°N 151.3 W/m2
60°S 181.8 W/m2
Interesting Richard. The last paragraph makes me wonder whether he hasn’t got the message yet. Doesn’t he realise there will be no ice soon. / sarc
As long as you guys keep buying into their trap by using the extremes (April – September), extremes are always the most unstable…
..and now using June – December, which is the real metric
April 3rd and you can still walk all on ice and snow from Sapporo Japan to Detroit. Note that the NW passage has 3-4m ice in the western half – prediction: not sailing the NWP this summer.
I am still gobsmacked that such a stupid statement was published in a professional paper. It not only had to be written by an alleged scientist, but approved by three peer reviewers and an “editor”.
OK, so you want to play with solar radiation on September 15. Fine.
By the way, the edge of the Arctic sea ice extents is NOT 75 north … That would require 8.69 Mkm^2 of sea ice! On September 15, the ENTIRE Arctic sea ice extents is only 4.85 Mkm^2 At that area the edge of the Arctic sea ice is up at 78.8 latitude. Each “lost” square meter of sea ice extents is hit by only 171 watts/m^2 of direct radiation. About 10% to 15% more of indirect radiation, but lets stick to direct radiation only.
(You did remember that you have to correct for the radiation received on a flat surface, right?)
And that 171 watts/m^2 is at noon.
So, let’s look at what radiation really received each two hour interval at 78.8 latitude on September 15.
0.0 at 0100
0.0 at 0300
7 watts/^2 at 0500
36 watts/^2 at 0700
116 watts/^2 at 0900
171 watts/^2 at 1100
171 watts/^2 at 1300
116 watts/^2 at 1500
36 watts/^2 at 1700
0.0 at 1900
0.0 at 2100
0.0 at 2300
So, over a 24 hour day, just how did you get 151 watts/m^ 2 AVERAGE for the edge of the Arctic sea ice on September 15?
Ooopsie. Your source is wrong for the Arctic ice edge.
Wrong location.
Wrong “average” radiation.
Wrong “average” anything.
Now, let’s look at the Antarctic sea ice edge on September 15 over the same 24 hour period.
19.7 Mkm^2 of sea ice extents. Edge of antarctic sea ice extents is NOT at 60 south, but is rather at 58.7 south latitude. (You know, all these errors sure add up, don’t they? Gee, you’d think you would not keep making errors the “wrong” way each time for each example …..)
So, let’s look at what direct solar radiation is really received each two hour interval at -58.7 latitude on a flat surface on September 15.
0.0 at 0100
0.0 at 0300
0.0 watts/^2 at 0500
20 watts/^2 at 0700
257 watts/^2 at 0900
424 watts/^2 at 1100
447 watts/^2 at noon
424 watts/^2 at 1300
257 watts/^2 at 1500
20 watts/^2 at 1700
0.0 at 1900
0.0 at 2100
0.0 at 2300
Funny. I don’t see your supposed 24-hour average solar radiation value of 181 watts/m^2 ANYWHERE in that list. (Maybe your source measured the value for 60 south at 6:00 am and used it for the whole day? But, assume you do the stupid thing and pretend you can add all of the individual hours up over a 24 hour day and divide by the number of hours. Well, doing that error gives you 154 watts/m^2 over an entire day. Which is still wrong!)
Besides, an “average” value for the whole day is not only meaningless, but it is foolish to pretend it is anything but meaningless! The amount of energy reflected and absorbed varies minute by minute as the solar elevation angle varies each minute across the northern sky. Pretending some average albedo or average radiation can be used is dead wrong.
My sea ice albedo is from Judith Curry’s actual measured values from the Arctic SHEBA experiment at 78-80 for each day of year from March through October. Sea ice albedo (direct radiation) on day-of-year 258 is 0.82 at all solar elevation angles.
For direct solar radiation on a clear Arctic day, the open water albedo varies by solar elevation angle and wind speed of course, and so – like the solar radiation hitting each meter of open water – the amount of energy absorbed or reflected from sea ice and from open water replacing that sea ice varies STRONGLY each minute of each hour of each day as well.
So, on September 15, open ocean albedo for direct radiation will vary from 0.159 at dawn to 0.093 at 1100 and 1300 hours, then go back up to 0.159 at dusk. (The open ocean water albedo for indirect (diffuse) radiation) remains near-constant across all solar elevations at 0.065, but diffuse radiation is only 10% to 15% of the direct radiation on a flat surface. In any case, the above numbers are for direct radiation only.)
Gary Pearse says:
April 3, 2014 at 8:43 am
April 3rd and you can still walk all on ice and snow from Sapporo Japan to Detroit.
You’d need to take some very big steps to cross to Sakhalin!
Note that the NW passage has 3-4m ice in the western half – prediction: not sailing the NWP this summer.
We’ll see.
All that cold air that has been pouring down across the eastern North America this winter had been traversing across the Hudson’s Bay. Even right now it is still -20 across much of the bay. As a result it seems that the ice on the bay is unusually thick this year. I would expect that the melting of the Hudson’s bay to ocurr much later than normal this year.
Jimbo says:
April 3, 2014 at 8:39 am
————————-
I’m thinking of pitching a documentary idea to the BBC, I’ll tell them i’ve got permission to join some Russian ice breaking ships as they work through the Summer months.
Sort of “ice road truckers”
This week on the BBC follow-
” Ice sea breakers of the Summer months” as they brave the ice and rescue foolish people who think they can navigate the arctic without help.
————————————–
“For this reason, especially in the summer, there has been an increase in the need for icebreakers on the Northern Sea Route”
crosspatch says: There is a growing need for reliable sea ice predictions.
Why? Is it a growing number of people wanting to know out of idle curiosity or is there really a “need” for these predictions and if so, what is that need?
That’s my line.
If it can be said there is a growing need for sea ice prediction I’d like to know why.
I am skeptical of why we spend vast sums monitoring so many things without any regard for where those resources may otherwise be needed for more serious pursuits.
Suppose there was a 5 year hiatus on all ice monitoring. Maybe even only check every 5 years.
Or even 10? Would the resulting data not tell the same story?
If one of the WUWT graphers were to go back and plot ice extent at 5 year increments over the history of ice measurement what would it reveal? The same thing we look at now, right?
Interesting you missed the last paragraph in the link. They project increased business for their ICEBREAKERS for the next 30 years! Who needs ice breakers in say 2025?
Phil. says:
April 3, 2014 at 9:07 am
Gary Pearse says:
April 3, 2014 at 8:43 am
April 3rd and you can still walk all on ice and snow from Sapporo Japan to Detroit.
“You’d need to take some very big steps to cross to Sakhalin!”
Why do that, Walk on the ice to land bordering the Sea of Okhotsk? Anyway Phil, put away your tweezers and magnifying glass, my main point relates to reports almost a decade ago when the Japanese reported that you used to be able to see the arctic ice at Hokkaido’s north coast and that now it requires several days sea voyage to catch site of the ice and they were talking about at the height of ice in Feb-March. Ice has been jammed up against their coast for months and hey its already late for their spring cherries in April.
@ur momisugly RACookPE1978
I guess you didn’t bother to even look at Fig. 1 of Curry et al. (2001) Applications of SHEBA/FIRE data to evaluation of snow/ice albedo parameterizations, did you, let alone read the paper? Or read Perovich (1996) The optical properties of sea ice?
“Edge of antarctic sea ice extents is NOT at 60 south, but is rather at 58.7 south latitude.” So you calculated a very irregular outline that varies between years to a precision of 0.1°, did you? Doubtful, but at any rate the edge of the ice at any given year is only half the story for an energy calculation. The difference has to be calculated on the area between that and that of ‘normal’ (median or mean recent) value. 75°N is the average latitude of the ‘gap’ in the current vs. 30 year average September Arctic ice cover, and 60°S is a reasonable value to use for the Antarctic.
I am using Eisenman and Huybers’ 2006 code to calculate daily insolation values. You?
“But, assume you do the stupid thing and pretend you can add all of the individual hours up over a 24 hour day and divide by the number of hours.”
Guess what, genius? That is exactly what you have to do to calculate the daily insolation rather than its value at any one time.
Sea ice expert Wacky Wadhams predicted “final collapse of sea ice” by 2016:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/17/arctic-collapse-sea-ice
He’s big on methaneageddon, too.