Remember all that alarmist guff about Antarctica sea ice recording lower levels in winter a couple of years ago? Georgina Rannard of the BBC wrote a story headed ‘Antarctic sea ice at “mind-blowing” low alarms experts‘, while Clive Cookson at the Financial Times gave us his suggestion that the area “faces a catastrophic cascade of extreme environmental events… that will affect the climate around the world”. The scare story caravan has moved on to pastures new these days, not unrelated to the fact that at the end of 2024 the extent of sea ice in Antarctica was roughly the same as the 1981 to 2010 average. According to the U.S.-based National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC), “this provides a sharp illustration of the high variability of Antarctica sea ice extent”. It does indeed, and it also provides us with a classic case study of how a short-term natural variation, well understood by many scientists, is weaponised by activists in science, politics and journalism to induce mass climate psychosis with the aim of promoting the political Net Zero lunacy.
The less hysterical NSIDC would appear to be the same NSIDC that published a paper updated as recently as last July asking, “has Antarctic sea ice hit a breaking point?”. As the Daily Sceptic has reported in the past, Antarctica has been a bit of a disappointment to the climate cry-baby crowd since it has shown little warming for at least 70 years. “Now scientists are eager to know if climate change has finally caught up with Antarctica sea ice,” notes the NSIDC paper. Helpful as ever in the mission of preaching climate Armageddon, Rannard of the BBC provides us with an “experts say” quote: “Without its ice cooling the planet, Antarctica could transform from Earth’s refrigerator to a radiator.”
Interestingly, the second author on the Rannard story was ‘data’ specialist Becky Dale who subsequently enrolled for the six-month sabbatical run by the Green Blob-funded Oxford Climate Journalism Network. This is a crash course in climate catastrophisation reporting. Previous participants have been asked to write about how fruits such as mangos are less tasty than in the past due to climate change. A recent speaker has called for “fines and imprisonment” for those expressing scepticism about “well supported” science.
The ’mind-blowing’ quote that made headlines around the world has been attributed to Dr. Walter Meier of the NSIDC. Dr Meier, reported Rannard and Dale, “is not optimistic that the sea ice will recover to a significant degree”. At the height of the scare, Meier claimed the 2023 winter dip was far outside anything we’ve seen. Again as we have reported in the Daily Sceptic, Dr. Meier seems a tad forgetful of the past work he has done on the obvious cyclical nature of Antarctica sea ice. Ten years earlier, Meier was part of a science team that unlocked the secrets of early Nimbus satellite photographs. These revealed significant Antarctica sea ice variability in the 1960s including a high in 1964, not seen again until 2014, and a low in 1966, similar to the recent dip. At the time, Meier commented that extreme ice highs and lows “are not that unusual”.
During November and December 2024, mid to late spring in the Southern Hemisphere, the daily Antarctica sea ice loss was 140,000 square kilometres compared to 165,000 sq kms for the 1981-2010 average. By the end of December the sea ice extent was roughly around the average recorded in the 30 years to 2010. Now it seems the NSIDC is a re-convert to stressing long-term trends, noting that the 2016-2024 timeline “is too short to definitely determine that a regime shift has occurred”.
Perhaps the NSIDC ought to mark the card of the British Antarctica Survey (BAS) team, who as late as May last year issued a press release claiming that the 2023 lows would be a one in 2,000 year event without climate change. Needless to say, this scaremongering twaddle was the product of a computer model. The model told the BAS that such “evidence” adds to existing observational evidence “that the last few years’ low sea ice could signal a lasting regime shift in the Southern Ocean”. More BS than BAS, the uncharitable might conclude.
Needless to say, the recent cyclical recovery in Antarctica sea ice has been ignored by mainstream media. It’s been a bad period for alarmists, coming so soon after years of record growth of coral on the Great Barrier Reef put an end to yet another profitable supply of constant alarums. Thankfully the BBC finds ever more obscure ways to keep the fast-fading Net Zero fantasy alive. Perhaps not as headline-grabbing as ice and coral, but it appears that a bumble bee has been sighted recently in Scotland. It was claimed that critters were “nest building” and this was due to climate change. Britannica does not find such a sighting very surprising, noting that in winter when the temperature outside rises above 10°C, bees will leave the hive momentarily to relieve themselves of waste. Possibly with a cheery wave and a “back in three, going for a wee”.
All of the confusion – designed to constantly promote Net Zero – arises because narrative-driven commentators assign most weather and climate changes to humans adding trace amounts of a trace gas into the atmosphere. It leaves little room for explaining the role of natural variation in the changing climate. Antarctica has not warmed for at least 70 years and a recent paper found that the summer temperature had shown a dramatic 1°C fall from 1977-1999, followed by a pause since the turn of the century. Another paper found that Antarctica sea ice extent had slowly increased since the start of continuous satellite recordings in 1979.
This case study of the recent hyped sea ice alarm in Antarctica shows how the scientific process is torn up and ridiculous claims, often produced by computer models, are made on the flimsiest of short-term evidence and observation. Lectures on disregarding short-term variations only resume when normal, and often cyclical, trends reappear and follow inconvenient directions.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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The eco-loons really are stuck on stupid .
😉
They want ACTION… with zero results… and zero responsibility for the damage done by that action.
It is Net-Zero, after-all !! 😉
I only saw this older WUWT contribution a few days ago. Nice perspective.
What else would you expect? How many reports have you seen in the MSM about extreme cold around the world (U.S., Canada, UK, Germany, Central Europe, China, South Korea, India, and Pakistan).
If I did my very quick estimate calc correctly..
Greenland is melting about three times as fast as the Antarctic.. ie about 0.001% pa
Climate alarmists do not believe in natural variation, only the CO2 control knob. That is why they are so embarrassingly wrong on so many things.
Antarctic sea ice is but one. Arctic sea ice is another. The MWP and LIA are yet another, both erroneously erased from history by MBH1999.
On shorter time frames, the warming ~1920-1945 is visually and statistically indistinguishable from ~1975-2000. Even IPCC AR4 WG1 SPM figure 4 said the former was mostly natural—yet still illogically insisted the latter was all CO2 control knob.
The only reasons the ‘climate science’ nonsense persists are that a lot of academic bread is buttered by it, and the renewables industry would not exist but for it. The former is now suffering from reputational collapse, the latter from economic collapse. Unfortunately, both still in slow motion.
Most critically they’ve lost control of the message knob at present-
Meta ends its DEI programs as Zuckerberg blasts Biden on Joe Rogan
Couldn’t help themselves dialling it up max and giving the game away.
To use their own tree ring stuff.
Biffa shows that around 1940 was warmer than 1990.
And 1990 was about the same, or slightly cooler as 1900
“The MWP and LIA are yet another, both erroneously erased from history by MBH1999.”
Not erroneous in the slightest. That was the goal.
“We must get rid of the MWP”.
-Phil Jones
…Watch the acceleration post January 20th.
” …natural variation, only the CO2 control knob.”
Antarctic Oscillation.
Well, there’s a true statement, if unintentionally so. Without sea ice,the Antarctic and Arctic oceans would be radiating lots of heat, because the insulation of the sea ice would not prevent it any more.
Oooops! A negative feedback!
They’re already radiators!
Check the ERBE results. The poles are -150 w/m2 to -200 w/m2. Which means they are radiating over 150 w/m2 more than they are taking in from the sun. Its a bit counter intuitive as we think of them being cold and cold = low energy. But they radiate that much more energy than they take in which is why they are so cold.
More sea water exposed due to less sea ice would be a negative feedback, lots more energy beamed out to space.
forgot the image
Yeah, I spotted that at first reading too. What an idiot. They can’t even fake stuff properly.
Dramatic recovery to the point of just above the mean for the second time in several years……I remember a couple of decades back when Arctic sea ice did the same, briefly merging with the mean line, accompanied by a lot of crowing from the skeptical camp. Since then, the sad truth is that Arctic sea ice has only very occasionally flirted with the mean line, from an almost permanent lower point on the curve.
I suspect we are seeing a similar phenomenon with Antarctic sea ice. However, given that there just isn’t anything like the same area of sea ice affected, by comparison to the Arctic, relatively small areas of growth or decline will of course produce bigger percentage differences, so fluctuations will appear more extreme.
It is interesting but not at all surprising, none the less, that the media haven’t picked up on it.
I wrote about the variation in Arctic sea ice in illustrated essay Northwest Passage in ebook Blowing Smoke. Three observations.
Yes Rud, the “deniers” on the subject of climatic changes are the history deniers.
Rud, your #3. Would that include Grace and Grace-FOMC?
Paper – Error Assessment of GRACE and GRACE Follow-On Mass Change
The actual uncertainty of GRACE/GFO estimated mass change averaged (or totaled) over a given region as in most GRACE/GFO applications is affected by many other error sources, which include: (a) leakage error due to the truncation of GRACE/GFO Stokes coefficients and spatial filtering applied to GRACE/GFO gravity fields, (b) errors in other geophysical signals that need to be removed from GRACE/GFO measurements (e.g., GIA effect in ice mass balance studies, soil, snow and surface water estimates in regional groundwater, steric correction in sea level or large lake level change, etc.), and (c) uncertainty of GRACE/GFO low-degree Stokes coefficients and geocenter series. The 4–6 cm RMS in the above Caspian Sea level change example can be attributed to residual leakage error of GRACE estimates, lack of adequate data for assessing steric effect on Caspian Sea level change, and/or uncertainty of altimeter measurements.
NASA/German Aerospace Center’s twin Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites indicates that between 2002 and 2016, Greenland shed approximately 280 gigatons of ice per year
280/2,600,000 = 0.00107%. But Gracey & GraceyFO can measure to 4 significant digits with the 4 to 6cm uncertainty?
Arctic ice is a relative newcomer in our planet’s history, only showing up in the last ~3 million years following the closing of the Panama Isthmus. 10k years ago, there was kilometres of ice covering the Arctic. That is an extreme fluctuation, not the decadal perturbations experienced now.
The scientific statistical definition of “climate” is the last 30 years of data.
When the 1991-2020 data became available, the NSIDC did NOT update the means and standard deviations that they show on their sea ice extent charts.
If they followed the correct protocols, the Arctic sea ice extent would not be tracking so far below their reference lines.
I think that was a deliberate act of alarmism. YMMV.
No it’s not. That was entirely made up for convenience. No science at all was used in defining this.
The reality is that taking a 30-year view of a system that has a very obvious 60-year cycle, will cause you to interpret half of a cyclical change as a forever increasing/decreasing event. That’s hoe Climate Scientology was created.
I think PI was being a bit diplomatic so you missed the point. Which I believe was that they made up a definition and cheated even on their own definition. The kind of stuff we hear ad nauseam from Banton and AlanJ the two strident net-zero empirical data bozos.
No it’s not. That was entirely made up for convenience. No science at all was used in defining this.
The reality is that taking a 30-year view of a system that has a very obvious 60-year cycle, will cause you to interpret half of a cyclical change as a forever increasing/decreasing event. That’s hoe Climate Scientology was created.
Wow, totally not my point. I thought that putting “climate” in quotes would be a sufficient hint.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.
I do happen to agree with you on the particular nail you are pounding regarding the 60-year cycle.
How about if I change out “scientific” and make the statement: The governmental statistical definition of “climate” is the last 30 years of data.
As phil said above, the government set up their own definition, and then couldn’t even abide by their own stupid rules!
Agreed, although I wasn’t really disagreeing with yourself, just the premise used by Climate Scientologists.
Perhaps ‘political statistical definition’ is more accurate.
And since they are irregular 60+ year cycles with (for AMO) 30-40 years of warming in the last few cycles and ~25 years of cooling and out of phase with PDO such that they can offset or add to each other – then Climate should really be 200 years +/- 50 years. Certainly more than 30.
“The scientific statistical definition of “climate” is the last 30 years of data.”
Citation, please? It isn’t. Thirty years is the period used for a climate normal, for temperature. Usually in calendar decades. It’s a convention – too short and the “normal” is noisy; too long and it’s hard to get the data, plus climate change tends to mess with it.
No it’s not, except by Climate Scientologists. 30 years is a ludicrous, and utterly useless, period to choose in any system that has fairly obvious 60-year cycles. It has absolutely no foundation in science, merely fanatsy.
One might almost imagine that someone deliberately invented this period in order to pretend that an upward part of a cycle would continue forever. Hmmmm….
Can you provide your definition of ‘climate change’?
Climate variability occurs at all timescales. ‘Climate normal’ for the earth is an ice age.
Same old red herring. There are mathematical tools to deal with noise. Too bad they don’t seem to work when applied by climate scientists! Why? Because there is no noise in a temperature measurement series, IT IS ALL TEMPERATURE, nothing extraneous. The real problem is the variance is large which tells folks there is a large uncertainty. Got to hide that variance!
That’s an interesting comment, because I made the acquaintance of a retired UC Berkeley Professor of Mathematics a few years ago. I didn’t get to know him well because, unfortunately he passed on (yes, yes, soon after he met me ha ha, not funny). Anyway, his friends at the Sunday morning tea room discussion described his work on noise and mathematical tools. Apparently, the guy was a legend in the field. I wish I’d had the opportunity to talk to him about some of the issues here, including the one under discussion right here – polar sea ice variability. Probably not a fruitful topic, but others might be. Not possible with climate scientists who start with the conclusion, sing “Will it go round in circles” and arrive back at the conclusion, so it must be true.
Quaternary
“Thus, while the 2016 to 2024 timeline is too short to definitively determine that a regime shift has occurred, one month where extent approached average extent is too short to contradict the idea of a regime shift.”
NSIDC
Sounds suitably prudent to me😁
So, they can’t determine a regime change, and they can’t contradict the idea of a regime change.
I thought the Science ™ was settled?
The only really honest statement in all these climate reports would be –
“we just don’t know”
“we just don’t know”
We just don’t know what the future will be!
“So, they can’t determine a regime change, and they can’t contradict the idea of a regime change.
I thought the Science ™ was settled?”
That’s why I wrote that it sounded suitably prudent 🧐😅😜😉
Science is never settled. We all know that but it can get to the point of producing overwhelming evidence. Thus far whether or not global sea ice proves to be the “canary in the coal mine” or not, remains to be seen.
As long as the planet continues to warm, with retreating global sea ice, and increasing CO2, mainstream climate science will hold all the aces in the pack. It won’t matter how many excellent studies to the contrary that are produced by the most brilliant of scientists, the narrative won’t change unless, as many here claim, nature has its say.
Even then, I believe there’s been so much investment in the narrative that, it would take decades to slowly sweep it all under the carpet.
Eg: If CO2starts to drop away along with continued warming, there would be some sort of excuse to still blame previous CO2 build up in the atmosphere.
Or, conversely, if planet starts to cool with CO2 continuing to rise, blame will be focused on climate change driven changes to ocean currents or volcanic eruptions or whatever.
For now, however, it’s all panning out as predicted so it all appears as if the science has been vindicated.
So, why weren’t they “suitably prudent” when there was a dip below average? They had no problem making alarmist claims.
True! I guess the the rebound has caused them to be a bit more circumspect.
“Massive Recovery in Antarctica Sea Ice Unreported”
You can get a better perspective in the polar plot below (from here)
The ice area is proportional to the radius (see x axis for scale). The recent data is in a magnified circle. There was indeed a remarkable excursion from normal lasting about two years; it has now returned to about normal. No record minimum this year.
Once again, a complex kerfuffle of lovely graphics that really isn’t easily understandable, but apparently supports your narrative. Last time I worked this one out, I discovered that it was almost completely irrelevant in the whole scale of annual variations, and got a headache for free.
Anyway, thanks for confirming that Antarctic sea ice
is not declining. I’m sure that you will tell all the media hacks and Climate Alarmists who claim that it is, immediately.
“that really isn’t easily understandable”
You can think of it as a c lock face, with months instead of hours. Its virtue is that it shows the whole history as a continuous line, tho I change color to mark the years. At the source you can magnify different regions, change colors etc.
Lies, damned lies and statistics. With nice soothing colours on the outer circles and jarring colours on the inner circles.
Give it up Nick. You are no good at propaganda.
It’s just a better way of plotting the same data. The colors are just rainbow..
There’s room to quibble about it being better, but it most certainly is a valid way of presenting data.
After fairly lengthy comparisons between tis and the graph above, I can see absolutely no benefit for this graph. It seems to require explanation, so it obviously isn’t as clear.
I prefer less “pretty” colours, and a different format
Anyway you can clearly see that 2022 and 2023 something happened to caused a dip in sea ice formation.
Can anyone think of something that happened near the top of the Pacific Gyre in early 2022 that would have cause some warming of the water ? 😉
Remember, you only need to push the “freeze line” down a bit to the south to stop sea ice forming at the edges where it normally forms to..
oops..
2022 and 2023….. should read 2023 and 2024Another way of showing Antarctic sea ice extent is shown below.
You can clearly see it has been basically steady from 1978 to about 2013
(there were data reasons for not calculating the running mean before 1990, something to do with the switch from two-day updates to daily updates, iirc)
Anyway, you can clearly see the slight rise from 2013 to 2015, then a drop down through the 2016 El Nino years, starting to recover a bit, then the 2022, 2023 dip, probably caused by the HT eruption combined with the 2023 El Nino.
Data shows current level is back up to about average for this time of year.
Graph is not up to date, but I might do that later.
the 2016-2024 timeline “is too short to definitely determine that a regime shift has occurred”.
Antarctic ice has been in continuous existence for the last ~30 million years since the formation of the Drake Passage and subsequently the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. We have no idea of the sea ice extent during that period, although it would be safe to say that the sea ice extent during the last 4-5 glacial periods over the last 1 million years would dwarf the current one.
The planet is currently experiencing mild, livable interglacial conditions. Antarctica is not going to melt.
The area, volume, extent of global sea ice has often been described as the “canary in the coal mine”, by climate scientists. For a long time Antarctica just wasn’t anywhere near causing the canary to get light headed. But in recent years (apart from 2021/2022) that has changed. Will this be a temporary blip or can we expect southern sea ice to bounce right back to pre-2016 levels? Only when such a recovery becomes evident, will I sit up and begin to believe that there’s just the outside chance a reprieve for the poor canary 😅
Fact is, it’s silly to be drawing any conclusions about ice variations in the Antarctic continent and its surrounding polynyas if the period under review is less than an average human lifetime.
And even then, it’s inviting nature to (once again) laugh at our naive claims about understanding planetary behaviors.
We’re the know-nothing pre-teens in this game.
What I think is particularly silly, is the use, by the media, of polar ice as a proxy for global warming when there are far better proxies in use globally today. Most prominent of them all is the expansion of mercury in a calibrated glass tube. It’s only been around since its invention by Fahrenheit in 1714. Then there’s oxygen brightness, as measured from satellites. Receding European glaciers too – naaaah, not a very good proxy for temperature.
Fact is, it’s silly to be drawing any conclusions about ice variations in the Antarctic continent and its surrounding polynyas if the period under review is less than an average human lifetime.
Perhaps so! But it’s no silly to those who claim with every passing year of rising temperatures etc, that their predictions are being realised. Until/if this situation changes, then as I stated before, they will continue to hold all the aces in the pack.
Luckily you are in for some education. We are very close to the next progression of the AMO into a cool phase. Watch the Arctic sea ice increase. It could start soon.
“Luckily you are in for some education. We are very close to the next progression of the AMO into a cool phase. Watch the Arctic sea ice increase. It could start soon.”
I hope you’re right. However, I’ve been following the climate scare since late 1980s. During those several decades, I’ve heard lots of claims to do with PDO AMO etc, so please forgive me for remaining skeptical until I see evidence of it happening. I would certainly welcome the prospect of such a natural change and the discovery that it’s not CO2 after all. However, until the alleged observed cooling starts, I’ll keep the skis locked away, gathering dust 😉
What was it like 500 years ago? 1000? 5000? You have no idea. Which means all this hand-wringing over tiny variations is more than just silly.
“What was it like 500 years ago? 1000? 5000? You have no idea. Which means all this hand-wringing over tiny variations is more than just silly.”
Possibly true. As I’ve said before, I believe there are vast gaps in understanding climates before the instrumental record. However, I do find it difficult to believe also that AGW is just a figment of a few scientists’ imaginations. Also, as I’ve said before, even among the skeptics, many believe that CO2 and human activity is having a discernable impact.
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Reply
“or can we expect southern sea ice to bounce right back to pre-2016 levels?”
Which it has now done.
Current level for the ‘day of year’ is now above…..
1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
The canary is well and truly alive and chirping !
(my spreadsheet only goes back to 1997)
Call it the silent treatment version of whack-a-mole news coverage on climate. Back when Antarctic ice was all the rage, Gov. Jerry Brown got riches for California and even several miles of construction for the high-speed rail to nowhere.
Good god this is stupid. Comparing summer sea ice. My god you people can’t be this dumb
It most surely is, but still climate crackpots quote it. I don’t know who you mean by you people but you might want to stick around and see that many people on here aren’t dumb at all. In fact, this is the top climate realist site, with conclusions based on real scientific data.
I wondered why the MET office had not updated its site on the state of Antarctic sea ice, since August 2024
There’s something amiss with the NSIDC chart, both the Arctic and Antarctic have big gaps in the data:
https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph
Yes, both are missing data from Sept 12 to Sept 17 (inclusive) of 2024.
6 days is not really a big gap, though.
That’s not what I meant.
On 31st December the extent was 12.852 million km2 and then on 1st January it dropped to 12.341 million km2
It’s similar in the Antarctic.
I think you are looking at the wrong year.. turn on 2024 on the side tab.. 🙂
I looked that the original data, and there is nothing untoward.
Start of 2025 in the Arctic looks like this. (divisions are 20 days)
See my comment above. I’ve noticed this for a few years now. The Jan 1 data doesn’t start off close to the Dec 31 data, then it gets fixed. Maybe it’s some kind of normalization?
Phil, The chart linked by Redge uses some kind of averaging over 3 or 4 days.
Maybe they do a reset on day 1 of each year ?
Could also be a leap year issue, that extra day can be a pain for graphing. 🙂
I get my data from the ftp sites.
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/north/daily/data/
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/south/daily/data/
https://nsidc.org/data/masie (download the csv file)
You need to tell your browser to accept these ftp sites, though.
I’ve noticed that too. It seems to happen every year. I don’t know what it means, nor do I have the time to try to figure it out, but your observation is correct, except it seems to have been “fixed”.
12.265 December 31st 2024
12.341 January 1st, 2025
Phew! I was beginning to think it was just me.
Speaking of ice….Must be time for a polar bear update surely?! How are they going, must be extinct by now, or have the solar panels and windmills saved them..?
Nope, no negative change in polar bear levels. Negative change in golden eagles, american eagles, ospreys, hawks and falcons, other raptors, owls and bats and songbirds, measured in millions.Typical kind of trade numbers for libtard do-gooders (and their criminal gods).
Net-Zero change in Keeling curve. Net-Zero change in natural climate.
I noticed this short term variation is one of a few months, from a recent trend having been existence for a few years that had especially low Antarctic sea ice, including record lows. I went to this WUWT article because I remember WUWT previously posting articles talking up mere few months periods of sea ice temporarily getting to near-normal after big decreases. I remember WUWT doing this after the 2006 big sharp plunge of Arctic sea ice, and since then when a sea ice anomaly briefly gets to close to normal after a low point that’s part of a multi-years trend.
“Massive Recovery in Antarctica”That certainly qualifies as “hysterical” for a headline using the author’s own language!
Reaching the recent average for about three weeks is hardly a “massive Recovery”.
Given the rapid reduction in Antarctic seaice since this post will we see a retraction in the near future?