More Of The Usual Hype About Arctic Ice

Far from collapsing, Arctic sea ice area has been remarkably stable in the last decade.

NSIDC has provisionally announced that Arctic sea ice extent has recorded the lowest maximum in the satellite record.

This has naturally set the media off ringing alarm bells, like this silly one from Climate Home, “Arctic sea ice fell to its lowest winter extent in recorded history”

The reality is much more boring. According to NSIDC themselves, maximum extent this year has dropped from 5.612 to 5.607 million sq miles since last year. Such a small amount must be well within the margin of error, although these are not published.

Far from collapsing, Arctic sea ice area has been remarkably stable in the last decade.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png

And with multi year ice continuing to recover from 2008 lows, ice volume has also been growing in the last few years.

http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/

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