Like watching the number of days that a major hurricane has not made landfall on the United States (now over 3000 days), we can now watch the number of days that Antarctica’s sea ice continues to be above the 30 year baseline. The constant growth is remarkable.
As shown in the plot below, data from University of Illinois Cryosphere Today shows that Antarctic Sea Ice Extent Anomaly has been positive since July 5th, 2011.
We are now on day 1001 of positive anomaly based on the 1979-2008 baseline.
Here is all the data plotted:
Source of the data: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/timeseries.south.anom.1979-2008
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If you are genuinely concerned about the potential implications of a climate change, that graph should really make you shudder.
Antarctic sea ice should reach it’s maximum in August or September — why has it recently dropped? Are we seeing some kind of “Great Pause” in sea ice extent? And what is happening with land ice? Isn’t that what we really care about?
Barry says:
August 22, 2014 at 8:12 pm
Is the land ice melting at the moment? Oh no, we’re all doomed.
A drop like this in August – before the late-September maximum Antarctic sea ice peak, before the mid-September Arctic sea ice minimum point – has happened several times in each sea ice yearly cycle in each hemisphere. Nothing unusual nor spectacular to note as of this date.
Supposedly, it is the total sea ice + land ice area that matters, because the heat balance of “energy reflected” vs “energy absorbed” worldwide is claimed to be strongly influenced by sea ice extent since land-based ice does not vary in area each year. Aside: I say “claimed to be influenced” because the CAGW catastrophic profits (er, prophets) hyperventilate about Arctic sea ice extents varying between latitude 72 to 81 each year, but ignore the ever-increasing Antarctic sea ice extents that actually DO reflect significant solar energy between latitudes 69 south to 59 south each year. In fact, each September, each square meter of Antarctic sea ice at ever-higher maximum extents each year receives five TIMES more solar energy than the (sometimes receding) edge of the Arctic sea ice!
Sea levels are affected only by meltwater runoff – which is a land-based ice effect of glacier thickness, glacier length, and most importantly, continental ice thickness in Greenland and Antarctica. Even if every glacier on earth were to get shorter somehow, total glacier area would not change much. Now, about 1/2 of glaciers are retreating, 1/4 are advancing, and 1/4 are not changing length nor ice thickness (depth).
Has anyone alerted Chris Turney about this?
Here is the story. There used to be screams about global sea ice, then they stopped caring. Ask yourself why? Your answer is there.
Barry,
This is why they stopped screaming (for now at least).
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/images/iphone.anomaly.global.png
Jimbo,
Here’s another chart for your Global Sea Ice folder:
I suspect the same feedback that keeps arctic ice low will keep antarctic ice around. Namely that briny ice melts to liquid at a lower temperature and freshwater stays as ice to higher temps. As sea ice expands in winter, more and more of the ice becomes salt-free from precipitation and natural freezing effects. Antarctic seas will have to be even warmer than arctic seas to start seeing degradations,
Us see blocking polar vortex over the south magnetic pole.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_t10_sh_f00.gif
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/10hPa/orthographic=161.58,-61.50,365
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/blocking/real_time_sh/500gz_anomalies_sh.gif
[snip – off-topic. this thread is about Antarctica, not Australia -mod]
Index AAO.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/aao/aao.obs.gif
Blockade circulation over Antarctica. Growth temperatry. The decrease in ice growth.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/z200anim.gif
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/antarctic.sea.ice.interactive.html
Just to confirm. Does anyone actually think that net ice mass is increasing in Antarctica?
Cosmic rays high.
http://www.bartol.udel.edu/~pyle/thespnplot.gif
These posts, and Watts’ headline, imply, although none make a reasoned case, that growing Antarctic sea ice (or documented land ice increases in the interior) disprove the conclusions of Science that Earth is Warming and Man is the Cause. Nor do Scientists claim so.
Another example of straw man arguments at WUWT.
Apparently you have no clue what a straw man is. A straw man is a restatement of an argument into a different argument for the purpose of defeating the point. These posts and Watts headline are not restating anything. They are reporting data. A critical component in any scientific field except apparently climatology.
As they are reporting data, it is up to intelligent people to then check to see if the data supports the conclusion of the hypotheses. Which you could have done, but instead decided to play stupid.
Learn the meaning of words before you use them.
philjourdan
You say to warrenlb
I see no evidence to support your accusation that warrenlb “decided to play” anything.
Richard
The Antarctic is losing more net ice mass despite regional gains. That this loss is occurring at the edges is consistent with a warming ocean and its magnitude is not consistent with the heat flux from geothermal sources. I can imagine that this could be refuted by conflicting observations. But the conversation tends to keep veering away into the land of ad hominem. Would someone like to address this?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009GL040222/abstract;jsessionid=5CC63C213C94CF82C29D3519069FF8C7.f03t03