From Peter courtesy of Helen Dyer

Arctic sea ice is always fluctuating significantly. During the medieval warm period 1000 years ago, there is anecdotal evidence that for much of the 12th century, the Arctic was navigable in summer. Then came the "Little ice age” for 500 years where glaciers advanced all over the planet and the Arctic must have expanded considerably.

Then around the late 1700’s the Earth started warming again, glaciers started receding and sea levels began rising again. None of the preceding can be attributed to CO2 because in the late 1700’s CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was around 280 ppm and it took until about 1950 to reach 300ppm and it is now over 400 ppm.

The greatest warming period in the last 200 years was 1910 to 1940 and warmist scientists try and attribute this to volcanoes, and other causes because they know it wasn’t caused by CO2. During the 1910-40 global warming period , Arctic ice shrank and glaciers receded.

But in the 1940’s , the planet started cooling again and did so until the mid 1970’s. During this period, the Arctic expanded and glaciers advanced. During this period, the consensus of climate scientists was that the Earth was going to enter another ice age.

But then the planet started warming again until the El Nino of 1998 and average warming since then has been minimal. The point I am trying to make with all the above is that Arctic ice is sensitive to Earth global temperatures so if the planet is still warming significantly, then we should look to the Arctic to verify it.

One of the many organizations that measure Arctic sea ice is the US based National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) who have the following on their site….

"Arctic sea ice appears to have reached its annual maximum extent on March 7. This is the lowest maximum in the 38-year satellite record.”

"NSIDC director Mark Serreze said, "I have been looking at Arctic weather patterns for 35 years and have never seen anything close to what we’ve experienced these past two winters.””

"Arctic sea ice maximum at record low for third straight year”

""While the Arctic maximum is not as important as the seasonal minimum, the long-term decline is a clear indicator of climate change,” said Walt Meier, a scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory and an affiliate scientist at NSIDC.”

Wow, the ARCTIC is in big trouble! Perhaps we should look at the actual data.


NSIDC use two Arctic sea ice measuring systems…

1. Sea Ice Index(SII)….history back to 1979
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It shows significant shrinking until 2006 then the decline slows quite a bit, but 2006 is still higher than the present.

2. MASIE……………...history back to 2006
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Screen-Shot-2017-03-22-at-8.00.17-PM.gif
From the MASIE web page. http://nsidc.org/data/masie/about_masie
"About MASIE-NH
MASIE-NH stands for the Multisensor Analyzed Sea Ice Extent – Northern Hemisphere. It is similar to the Sea Ice Index (SII) product in that it is easy to use and gives a graphical view of ice extent in various formats. However, it relies more on visible imagery than on passive microwave data, so the ice edge position will generally be more accurate than that of the Sea Ice Index”

So Masie is more accurate than SII but NSIDC are basing all their press reports on SII. The above MASIE cyclic trend is not anywhere to be found on the NSIDC site, only the data is available and can be downloaded in CSV format. It appears to me that the reason they don’t display the trend as above is because you don’t have to be a climate scientist or a mathematician to determine that for the last 10 years, Arctic ice has remained pretty much the same. It shows that

· Arctic max ice for 2017 was about the same as 2006.

· Arctic min ice for 2016 was about the same as 2007

And from the university of Illinois, the graph below shows that since 2006, sea ice has remained the same.

image008.jpg

So next time you see the headline "Arctic in death spiral”, just remember that song from Porgy and Bess, "It aint necessarily

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:38 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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