The map below compares current Arctic ice with the same date in 2002. Green shows ice present in 2013 which was not present in 2002. Red shows the opposite.
Note how much more western Arctic ice there is now than there was 12 years ago. The green ice will almost all survive the winter, because it is too far away from the Fram Strait. But the red 2002 ice was largely doomed to get transported out of the Arctic and melt. The point being is that Arctic ice is in the best shape it has been since at least 2001.
Where is the Western Arctic? West of what? I know, don’t tell me. Its just a little bit South of the 90 degree North latitude.
Are you color blind?
To the left / west of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and above or north of Alaska and the Mackenzie River Delta.
I’m going to advise all the Arctic agencies to just monitor the Western Arctic from now on because that is all that matters …
There was a same melt pattern in 2007, mainly on the Russian, or Eastern side, and yet nobody went on then about how important the Western side was. It was all about how it was wind driven and not due to temps. 2008 and 2009 were hailed as proving this.
Then the trend went down again.
2012 was all due to the summer storm of course providing an extreme melt, given that it is no wonder 2013 shows a return to the normal decline for this summer and perhaps next before continuing the plunge.
Denialists grasped at feathers in 2008, seems they are doing same again now.
Nothing wrong with that of course, same as Alarmists grabbed 2007 and said ice free 2013 ! Which was actually worse than what is being done here because they were supposed to be non excitable folk.
People on the internet have little patience and would prefer to have today’s value to propel their own spin on things. That is a curse of both sides.
Andy
Are you in a position to advise government agencies?
“Are you in a position to advise government agencies?”
I might need a filibuster 🙂
‘… grasped at feathers …’?
On what planet do they use that expression?
“The point being is that Arctic ice is in the best shape it has been since at least 2001.”
LOL
Here is a graph where you can delete year by year:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html
No year before 2007 had less ice than 2013 at the time given.
Bu maybe i did not get the point with “better shape”; does it remind you of MM?
I see that you failed to comprehend anything that I wrote.
You are forgetting Steve is only looking at one area and not taking volume also into consideration to push forward a point.
It’s not meant to be scientific, just to show a compare and contrast since last year. You have to admit he has a point on extent difference. To be honest the extent has been bigger than most arctic scientists predicted.
Cryosat2 figures will be interesting.
Andy
What was the volume of the ice-free portions of the western Arctic in 2002?
And yet again Andy raises the phoney baloney volume issue … at least he isn’t claiming the ice is all hiding at the bottom of the ocean 😉
Good one. I see now the IPCC is going to say the missing heat went into the deep ocean where we do not have the ability to measure it. I mean, they know there is excess heat, there just has to be……equivalent to thousands of Hiroshima bombs going off everyday….bla bla bla….Yea right. How a scientist can say things like that and not loose their job is proof that we live in very strange times.
I say it went into deep space where we cannot measure it. That didn’t cost the tax payers anything, and it will not harm the economy or the environment and I bet is far more accurate that the IPCC show of hands, post-normal “science”.
Steven,
Nice contradictions in the linked article below. One says ice, one says high winds.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/09/13/crew-filming-reality-tv-show-forced-to-cancel-trek-through-northwest-passage-on-jet-skis-after-costly-rescue/
The JetSki group (the truthers)
“The group had encountered ice, high winds, cool temperatures and felt they were not safe and were at risk if they did not request rescue” “…they were bogged down by plummeting temperatures, a polar bear ripping apart one of their tents and the ocean freezing underneath them.” “We wake up in the morning and we’re locked in the ice. The ice has moved in, it’s completely around all the jet skis and the boat”
The rowing group (the liars, who occasionally wrote the truth on their blog)
“…one of the main goals of the expedition had been to demonstrate how ice-free the arctic had become. Some critics have suggested that our truncated journey speaks to the contrary but nothing could be further from the truth,” wrote expedition member Kevin Vallely… Our slow progress due to high winds and erratic weather” blah blah blah…
On a sort of related note. I was reading an old article on NASA reading old tapes from moon surveys. The article goes on to talk about other old tapes from NASA. It ends with a comment about searching for old NIMBUS satellite tapes from the 1960s and how they would give us more info on Arctic and Antarctic ice.
Wish they could find them.
For his part, Wingo has received a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to locate early Nimbus weather satellite tapes. Data from the satellites, first launched in 1964, was stored on tapes like those used with the Lunar Orbiters.
“Those images would push our knowledge of Arctic and Antarctic ice packs 14 years further into the past,” he says.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9134771/The_lost_NASA_tapes_Restoring_lunar_images_after_40_years_in_the_vault?taxonomyId=12&pageNumber=5
I don’t like sea ice.