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Antarctic Sea Ice is Growing – Because of Global Warming?

By Ed Caryl

Short answer: No. Antarctic sea ice has been growing, especially in the last three years. This has been largely ignored by the AGW crowd because it opposes their narrative. They needed badly to come up with an excuse. A recent article in the Daily Caller, quoted below, was recently discussed in this blog. See here.

A quote from the article: “The primary reason for this is the nature of the circulation of the Southern Ocean —water heated in high southern latitudes is carried equatorward [sic], to be replaced by colder waters upwelling from below, which inhibits ice loss,” Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, told author Harold Ambler in an email. Read more: http://dailycaller.

It is a bit difficult for me to swallow this in light of the temperature trend in the southern ocean:

Figure 1 is the annual temperature trend in the Southern Ocean according to GISS.

It is also opposite the well understood thermohaline current flows in both the Arctic and Antarctic, where warm currents flow from the equator to the poles, is cooled, surface evaporation increases salinity, and the cold, dense, more saline water sinks, to rise again closer to the equator. The southern ocean is getting colder, not warmer, opposite to the trend stated above.

Figure 2 is the Southern Hemisphere sea ice anomaly inverted to match the temperature curve.

Note how closely these curves match, even though one is annual average data and the other is daily ice anomaly. Just how is it that this high southern latitude supposed heated water is getting colder, not warmer. I’m sorry, but my credulity doesn’t stretch this far.