Friday, January 08, 2010

Sea ice extent

This bothers me a bit. I was wondering why I hadn't seen any comparisons of sea ice extent in the Arctic on any of the sceptical blogs I read. Turns out the sea ice is at a pretty low level, despite the cold snap. At least, that's what it looks like to me. Land snow coverage is pretty unprecedented, though, from the looks of it - note: the 1980 slide below doesn't suggest there was no snow on the land. This has only been included in the more recent slides.

Source: Cryosphere Today.





2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are major problems with the recent records of sea ice extent,
including but not limited to failed satellite instrumentation.

You don't see believable claims of low sea ice either, the record is not good at the moment

Anonymous said...

Look at the concentration coloring. 2010 looks to have a bit low of an extent, but the concentration is actually much higher than in 1980!

Its nearly uniformly 100% ice. As you you can see, in prior years, there were still pockets of water even the during the summer peak.

One reason for the decline in sea-ice maximum this season has been the prevailing wind patterns which have compacted the ice inward significantly. This is why the concentration is so much higher and the extent lower.