Sea Ice Curiosity

The sea ice data available from NSIDC includes estimates of both sea ice extent and sea ice area. Extent is the area over which sea ice concentration is at least 15%, while area is … well, the area covered by ice. Necessarily, sea ice extent will be greater than sea ice area.

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Summer Ice

RealClimate has an interesting post on arctic sea ice from Dirk Notz at the Max Planck Institute, which discusses (among other things) the obsession with the summer minimum extent. He adroitly points out several interesting points. One is that weather conditions strongly affect the summer minimum, so it’s really too early to know whether this summer’s minimum will be a record-breaker or just ho-hum. Another is that the decline in arctic sea ice thickness is where the real story lies, but for the moment thickness is not nearly so well-observed as extent so it’s extent that captures the most attention.

What’s Up?

When it comes to humankind’s influence on global climate, we should pay more attention to what’s really up.

On Thin Ice

When it comes to sea ice, especially in the arctic, the stooges have been very busy.

It wasn’t very long ago Shemp and Moe told us that Arctic sea ice was “about to hit normal.” Curly got in on the act too. Meanwhile Shemp desperately clings to the belief that the disappearance of arctic sea ice is “more of a marketing event than a climatological event,” and seems to think he can estimate sea ice volume better than the pros. I’m skeptical.