Arctic Ice Measurements Began In Coldest Year

By Paul Homewood

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/index.html

Whenever we hear about “Arctic ice melting”, it is always from a start point of 1979. Why should this be so, when we know there were satellite measurements being made at least as early as 1972?

Whatever the reason, it is a fact that 1979 was a particularly cold one, for instance in Iceland, as their Met Office point out.

http://en.vedur.is/climatology/articles/nr/1213

But what about the rest of the Arctic? I have taken the following sample of Arctic stations from GISS, giving a reasonable geographic spread.. The example of Angmagssalik in Greenland is shown below.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=431043600000&dt=1&ds=1

The stations are:

Akureyri Iceland Vardo Norway Nar’Jan-Mar Russia Ostrov Dikson Russia Mys Salaurova Russia Barrow Alaska Cambridge Bay Canada Angmagssalik Greenland

Using the GISS data, we can plot the temperatures between 1930 and 1979. In every single station, there is a clear, long term decline in temperatures from the 1940’s. In many cases, 1979 stands out as a particularly cold year, the only real exception being Barrow, reflecting the PDO shift a couple of years before. Even here though, the early 1970’s showed a steep decline, leading up to 1975 being the coldest year since 1924.

It would be hard to find a point since 1930, when conditions were not more favourable for massive Arctic sea ice extent. And they wonder why it has declined since.

Graphs below.

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