By P Gosselin
Late summer Arctic sea ice extent has remained steady for almost 2 decades.
In the late 2000s, experts and climate bedwetters, like Al Gore – warned the late summer Arctic sea ice would disappear already by 2015.
That prediction has yet to even come anywhere near close to happening.
According to the US National Snow and Ice data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder, the Arctic sea ice melt this year has long reached its low point, falling to 4.602 million square kilometers on September 10th:
Source: NSIDC.
Compared to the record low of 3.387 million square kilometers that occurred 13 years ago, 2012, this year’s value is more than 1.2 million square kilometers greater, and nearly half a million square kilometers more than 2007 (4.155 million square kilometers.).
Overall, Arctic lat summer sea ice trend has been flat for nearly 2 decades, defying the global warming trend prediction that it would melt to almost nothing by now. The alarmists have been completely wrong.
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So much for China using the Northwest Passage as a new sea lane to Europe.
he Northwest Passage is open a few months each year. The question is which months is it open.
And if the nuclear powered russian ice breakers can cope with the ice to keep the passage open (just in case).
Plenty of crossings this year.
All through the southern route, all guided by satellite imagery.
Still one heck of a lot of sea ice up there.
Bottomed out above 4.6 Wadhams this year. !
Far more than for most of the last 10,000 years.
Nice update on an important and divisive issue. Divisive is right, polar bears on one side and seals on the other.
I believe I’m detecting a pattern here.
How many “tripping points” have already passed? 20? 30? 100?
Should be enough data now to allow some modelling to be done on the likely accuracy of future climate prophecies – anyone awake over there at the University of Pennsylvania?
I mentioned in the earlier discussion that there seems to be a difference between the speed of NSIDC ice growth ice regrowth charts this Autumn, as compared to the NW Passage Sea Ice conditions. According to the latter, there is much more ice now covering the Beaufort Sea than is represented on the NSIDC charts. I will try to copy/paste images.
Today’s NSIDC charts still refusing to show new ice readvancing quickly in Beaufort Sea.
Google https://www.weather.gov/afc/ice and then compare with today’s NSIDC charts, which looks almost identical to the one heading this article from yesterday.
The provisional data from DMI show the minimum was above 5 Wadhams at 5,027,500 square km on 7th September. They’ve been upgrading their supercomputer, so the final number hasn’t been released on their ftp feed, although the chart is way beyond the normal date for finalised data now.
The official final OSISAF data are in at 5,071,505 sq km.
Where’s Martha Stewart?
Making cocktails.
On the rocks? On top of Kilimanjaro?
Martha Stewart Criticized After She ‘Captured a Small Iceberg’ for Cocktails During Greenland Trip
https://people.com/martha-stewart-captured-small-iceberg-greenland-trip-7866715
One follower said “drinking their iceberg cocktails while the planet is in flames is a bit tone deaf.”
I’d remark on what a dumb@ss the “One follower” is, except the writer probably just made it up. I guess they’re not mutually exclusive.
These curves are interesting. Notice how widely variant they are at the trough and how narrow the band is at the crest. So each year the maximum is almost the same, regardless of the melt in the summer.
The low point is more dependant on weather.
IIRC the 2012 low extent was because of a large storm that broke up the ice and pushed a lot more down Fram Straight than usual.
Sometimes the weather is calmer and the sea ice spreads out more..
Sometimes the winds blow the sea ice into one direction where it compacts.
Hmm? What is the maximum it can become? It can’t be 110% of fully covered.
NH Sea ice extent includes those region outside the Arctic basin.. eg Okhotsk and Bering seas
Sea ice can expand there without limit..
..also down past Iceland is open ocean where sea ice could expand to in another ice age.
Yes the Arctic sea ice is thinner and more spread out, the volume is however at a minimum:
PIOMAS since 2011… zero trend. !
In terms of any climate effect, the ice volume is irrelevant. Changes in surface area matter because this can cause a change in Earth’s albedo.
I agree the sea ice area is more relevant than sea ice extent which can be as low as 15% coverage. However the article refers to extent, the area minimum was 5th lowest.
Here is the National Snow and Ice Data Center(NSIDC) data grapher up to August 2025.
I prefer this view rather than having all the years on top of each other.
I agree, this graph is far more useful. The author’s graph doesn’t actually illustrate his claim, that the ice minimum has been stable for almost two decades. But your graph does support that claim. It clearly shows that the September minimums have been remarkably stable for almost two decades.
However the assumption of a linear trend is more questionable. Several features are observable: an increase in the amplitude of seasonal variation, and a flattening of the underlying trend both appear around 2008. These features undermine the assumptions of linear estimation.
More good news, it must suck to be the other side.
It’s more than sucky. The alarmists have been WRONG on every prediction, scenario, forecast, attribution, and wildassguess for 25 years. They’re oh for a million. And now Trump has called their bluff and shut down their gravy train.
They are shocked to the core and jumping out of windows. The bell is tolling. The End Is Nigh and not for Planet Earth but for their scam/hoax/con. For once their tears are real.
It’s one of those scientific arenas where you need decades, if not centuries, of data to come to anything close to a mature conclusion about how Arctic Sea ice behaves.
That’s not very compatible with 3 year grants and a 40 year career.
It’s one of those things, along with measuring sunspot cycles, El Niño/La Niña cycles, that is probably best carried out as a global collective.
I see that the NSIDC is still using the 1981-2010 median as their default comparison. Of course, this should be updated to the 1991-2020 median. No prizes for guessing why this has not been done.
I was curious about how the evolution of the antarctic sea ice extent compared with the arctic sea ice history. My motivation was trying to assess if the antarctic continent has a stabilizing influence on the year to year antarctic sea ice variations (it looks like it does). Did a quick web search and came upon what I think is a useful resource, https://zacklabe.com/antarctic-sea-ice-extentconcentration/. Lots of detailed data with references, no obvious “in your face” alarmist slant, and beautiful graphics. Thank you Dr Labe for making your important work readily available online.