We’ll come on to the Arctic in a moment, but at more temperate latitudes I am proud to announce that my Cornish alter ego has been officially outed as an “environmental campaigner” by the BBC. Moving pictures of yours truly, discussing drought rather than sea ice, are available via BBC iPlayer until around 18:30 this evening, possibly to UK residents only. Alternatively we have recorded our own moving pictures of this momentous event: Yesterday we had a good look around #Colliford Lake, by far the largest reservoir in #Cornwall. Following last year's #drought it is currently still less than ..read more

I should of course add “in the satellite era”, but the title is pretty unwieldy as it is! I was up early (UTC) to check the latest JAXA data, and sure enough that confirmed a new record minimum Antarctic sea ice extent: Having added a note to that effect the Arctic open thread, Lars Kaleschke from the Alfred Wegener Institute pointed out over on Mastodon that the AWI had published a press release about the event this morning: Let’s take a closer look at what the AWI had to say: On 8 February 2023, at 2.20 million square kilometres, the Antarctic sea ice extent had already dropped below the ..read more

A new month has arrived, and during January several Arctic sea ice metrics have been drifting towards the bottom of their respective decadal ranges. To begin with here is AWI’s high resolution AMSR2 extent graph, which is currently very close to being lowest for the date in the AMSR2 record: However that is less the case for area: Taylor is keen to see the PIOMAS volume data for January, but whilst we wait for the latest Polar Science Center update here is the CryoSat-2/SMOS volume graph, which now includes a couple of month’s worth of reanalysed results as well as more recent near real time ..read more

At the beginning of the New Year all the central regions of the Arctic are now refrozen apart from a small area of the Kara Sea: Most Arctic sea ice metrics are near the middle of their respective ranges over the last decade. By way of example, here is a graph of Arctic Freezing Degree Days based on the Danish Meteorological Institute’s temperature data for the area north of 80 degrees latitude: Rutgers Snow Lab’s northern hemisphere snow cover anomaly for December 2022 is slightly negative: Here too are the high resolution AWI AMSR2 area and extent graphs: The latest AWI CryoSat-2/SMOS v ..read more

A new month is upon us and Christmas is coming! Here’s another look at Lars Kaleschke’s high resolution AMSR2 area and extent graphs for the Arctic as a whole: Extent increase stalled for the last few days of November, and as a result extent is now in a “statistical tie” with 2017 for 4th lowest extent for the date in the AMSR2 record. The AMSR2 concentration map reveals that the Chukchi Sea is now mostly refrozen: However over on the Atlantic side of the Arctic there is now more open water than average in the Barents Sea: After a rapid rise at the start of November extent in the Kara Sea h ..read more

A change is allegedly as good as a rest, so here’s an alternative view of high resolution AMSR2 area and extent created using the experimental tools provided by the AWI’s Lars Kaleschke at: https://sites.google.com/view/sea-ice/ After a brief pause mid-month the refreeze has accelerated again. Both metrics are in the upper half of the decadal range, with extent this year just above 2021 and area just below last year. Next let’s take a look at sea ice concentration at the end of October: The Laptev and East Siberian Seas are now largely frozen over, but there is still some open water in the ..read more

Recently Judith Curry published a series of articles on the topic of blackouts. Since attempting to prevent such things is my “professional” speciality I’ve spent a bit of time over at “Climate Etc.” recently. Hence I couldn’t help but notice Judith’s article on Tim Palmer‘s new book, entitled “The Primacy of Doubt”. According to Judith: This book is a physics-intellectual feast.  Must read. Hence I immediately rushed online and bought a copy from amazon.co.uk, which arrived today. A more detailed overview will follow once I’ve had a chance to read the whole book, but leafing through it ..read more

Peter, a welcome new denizen here at the Great White Con Ivory Towers, appears to have parachuted into our far north summer hideaway on the shores of Santa’s Secret Summer Swimming Pool straight from Tony Heller‘s Unreal Climate Science blog. Prompted by Peter I wandered over to Tony’s place where I found to my surprise that he has recently been busy warming up an old chestnut of his that has been debunked numerous times over the past decade. Allegedly: Between 1990 and 2001, the IPCC rewrote the Arctic sea ice satellite record, and changed a trend of ice increasing to ice decreasing. Here ..read more

The 2022/23 freezing season has begun, so to begin with here are Arctic sea ice area and extent during its early stages: Both metrics are currently tracking 2021 quite closely. Here too is an AMSR2 animation of the transition from melting to freezing in the Central Arctic. Click to animate, and be warned that the file size is almost 10 Mb: Watch this space ..read more

As in previous years there is already a thread devoted to this year’s minimum extent. By way of a summary here are the end of August numbers for our favourite “high resolution” AMSR2 area and extent metrics: Extent is currently near the top of the range of the last 10 years. We have now reached the stage of the “melting season” when “refreezing” has started in the Central Arctic but melting at the periphery is outpacing it. However the Canadian Ice Service stage of development charts now show the arrival of new ice in the high latitudes of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago: Note the areas col ..read more