Arctic sea ice has continued its recent recovery despite 2023 being claimed as the hottest year on record globally, according to data recorded by Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI). From the AWI website (hat tip: Pierre Gosselin):
The slight recovery trend since the Arctic minimum was reached is continuing at the beginning of 2024, with the sea ice extent at the beginning of the year below the average value for the years 1981-2010, but in the lower range of the extreme values (minimum/maximum) of this international climate normal period (Figure 1).
If we look at the new reference period 1991-2020 introduced by the World Meteorological Organisation in 2021, January 2024 is roughly in line with the mean value of this period (see interactive graphic). The average Arctic sea ice extent in January was 13.99 million square kilometers, around 400,000 square kilometers greater than the ice cover in January over the last 20 years (Figure 2). During the month, the extent increased by approximately 29,000 square kilometers per day, which was slower than the average increase from 1981 to 2010.
Gosselin notes that the chart shows “a stable trend over the past two decades” with the recent January maximum “higher than 15 of the past 20 years”.
Polar bear specialist Susan Crockford remarks: “It’s almost like Arctic sea ice extent in winter has almost no relationship with global temperatures!”
The Daily Sceptic‘s Chris Morrison reported on this “stonking recovery” in Arctic sea ice back in February. But with other agencies and commentators now catching up with the news, it never hurts to keep the counternarrative facts in front of the public.
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If someone could publish a graph starting before 1979 you would see there isn’t really a story at all. 1979 has been identified as the high point of Arctic Sea Ice for many decades. Alledgedly this is when satellite imagery became available, but there are many other precise local records showing the lesser extent of Sea Ice before this.
Ocean is classified as ice covered if just 15% is covered by ice!
That is of course 85% ice free.
It is calculated by satellites recording the ice cover in each square of an artificial grid which is overlaid on the Arctic. If a square has 15% or more of ice then it is counted. This is done automatically as the measuring satellite passes over.
Now I don’t know about you folks, but by that measure my gin and tonic is ice covered.
Of course prevailing winds make a difference. A southerly will tend to compact the ice, reducing the measured extent and a northerly wind will disperse the ice and push it into warmer waters.
So you can see that the air temperature has minimal effect on ice extent whereas wind direction has a clear impact.
Just seen a classic on “Saturday Night Takeaway” (yes, I know – sad) but a girl who is “passionate about saving the planet” has been given a free holiday – will she take it?
I find it difficult to form opinions of subjects of this kind because I can see that evaluation of any data is fraught with difficulties and there seems to be some sort of tribal or emotional thing going on where people feel themselves to be part of one camp or another based upon what has to be inadequate scrutiny. You have to acquire the discernment to sense that the evils that we are suffering all have a particular flavour and from that you can deduce other things. For example, if the weather is being manipulated in order to control real or hypothetical detrimental climate change then how much can we attribute to deleterious side effects. The secrecy breeds bad ideas and policies. Interventions based on hubris, the recent injections for example. This absurd attempt of the Western mythos for greater and greater transcendence ultimately resulting in the absurdity and ugliness of identity politics. They keep you unwell and distracted whilst thet get away with all the spoils. They don’t care if they don’t have a world to inhabit afterwards anymore than a junkie cares about the source of his Smack.
“Hottes year ever” is not the language of science. It is the language of politics and bought and paid for Mainstream News. ——-For a start the temperature record of earth is a jumble of manipulated and adjusted data, overlapping unreliable records have been fiddled about with more times that a Lady of the Nights undergarments. We saw in the Climategate emails this determination to hide from the public the true state of what was really going on —-“We cannot account for the lack of warming”—— “I have just completed Mikes Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years to hide the decline”. ——The climate establishment knew full well that the earth was not warming as their climate models had projected and they did not want the public to know, because it would undermine government climate policies. Then there was that shenanigans with Manns Hockey Stick graph that was all over IPCC reports and TV news that apparently showed a rapid increase in warming in the 20th century. A certain expert statistician Steve McIntyre tried to get a hold of Manns data, computer code and methodology but Mann refused to provide it. —–Why would he do that? It is common practice in science that other people check your work. In the end McIntyre showed the graph FALSE. ——With this blatant lying and deception who could ever trust these people? —–Climate Change is Politics. It is the politics that allow eco socialist policies like Net Zero to be simply waved through parliament with not even a discussion or a vote. The public I don’t think realise how this absurdity is going to transform their lives for the worse, and the massive costs involved which is coming out of all our pockets. Our standard of living is to fall and all under false pretences of a climate crisis for which no evidence exists.
Spot on Varmint but in essence this Arctic sea ice discussion is fairly academic given that the ice of the Antarctic(85%) and Greenland (15%) are the main ice formations. The Arctic sea ice accounts for 0.06% which makes it insignificant. The Antarctic and Greenland are fine and the warm r period for them was 1880s to the 1940s when, interestingly, the CO2 was less than now which shows that there is little argument in worrying about CO2 warming up the planet – what we have is a better climate for growing food.
Yep, and while people all argue about “science” which they can batter their heads together all day and night about, the Technocracy that runs the world are getting on with the politics. The Politics of Sustainable Development. A world where the wealth and resources are controlled by them. Notice that it is all the wealthy western countries that are to pretend to save the planet first and fastest because we are deemed to have used up more than our fair share of all the coal oil and gas. To persuade voters that this is necessary you need a plausible excuse and that excuse is climate change, or the even more shrill “climate crisis”. You don’t even require any evidence to pull the wool over the publics eyes. You just keep telling them that “all scientists agree” and that every weather event that gets beamed to their living rooms via cable TV is their fault.