At the beginning of May AWI’s high resolution AMSR2 extent metric is at the top of the historical range: After a period of melt in the East Greenland Sea, export of sea ice from the Central Arctic via the Fram Strait has increased recently: Sea ice area in the Barents Sea peaked in the first week of April and has declined steadily since then: SMOS data is flowing again, and the gaps have been filled. Here’s the final pre melt ponding map of the spring: It reveals large areas of thin ice that have recently developed in the Kara Sea. Here’s a pseudo colour glimpse of the region through the c ..read more

Arctic sea ice extent in early April is singularly unexceptional. Here’s the AWI AMSR2 version: Things start to become more interesting when looking at the third dimension. Here’s the PIOMAS gridded thickness map for March 31st: and the CryoSat-2/SMOS map for the same date: Note the differing distribution of thick ice north of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago between the two maps. Note also the area of thinner ice along the coast of the Beaufort Sea visible on the CS2/SMOS map. By way of explanation for that phenomenon see the March sea level pressure map from the latest editi ..read more

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