Mark Serreze is the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. He believes that the Arctic is screaming, and he predicted that the North Pole would be ice-free in 2008.

Star-News

August 20, 2008 at 8:14 am

NSIDC graphs make it look like screaming Arctic sea ice is declining linearly, with 2016 at a record low.

Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis

Even though there has been almost no change in sea ice area over the past decade.

timeseries.anom.1979-2008

The Danish Meteorological Institute shows a very different graph, with no change over the past decade, or perhaps a slight increase.

osisaf_nh_iceextent_monthly-02_en.png

The graph below overlays the black NSIDC graph on the red DMI graph. The graphs matched fairly well until four years ago, when the NSIDC line diverged sharply downwards.

This divergence is enough to allow NSIDC to declare a record low and create the appearance of a downwards trend. More importantly, it allows them to make hysterical press releases like this.

February continues streak of record low Arctic sea ice extent

Another interesting story at NSIDC is that they stopped updating their ice age maps on week 36 last year, the week before the ice has its annual birthday. Had they updated the maps, they would have shown a huge increase in the amount of the oldest/thickest ice. But that isn’t the story NSIDC is paid to produce.