With ten years of hyped claims about Arctic sea ice declining, it takes effort to remember that ice in the Northern Hemisphere isn’t going away. This year’s monthly average for September (the annual minimum) is slightly lower than 2017, but still well above 2007. MASIE shows a surplus of 300k km2 and SII shows 450k km2. As a result, both linear trends are slightly positive, though I would call it a “plateau, ” as opposed to a “death spiral.”
Twelve Days in Nunavut
Previous posts described how the Northwest Passage was treacherously laden with ice this year. The image above shows the flash freezing in this region over the last twelve days. Sept. 18 the CAA ice extent (Canadian Arctic Archipelago) was 321k km2, close to its annual minimum. Yesterday MASIE showed 606k km2, a increase of 90% in that region.
The graph shows MASIE reporting Arctic ice extents totalling 4.93M km2 yesterday, 35k km2 below the 11 year average (2007 to 2017 inclusive). NOAA’s Sea Ice Index is the same as MASIE, 2007 was 845k km2 lower, and 2012 1.1M km2 less ice extent. A dip on day 252 to 4.43M km2 was an early daily minimum for the year. As shown in the first graph, the September monthly average exceeded 2007 by 300k in MASIE and 400k km2 in SII.
The table below shows ice extents in the regions comprising the Arctic in September.
| Region | 2018273 | Day 273 Average |
2018-Ave. | 2007273 | 2018-2007 |
| (0) Northern_Hemisphere | 4931836 | 4966893 | -35057 | 4086883 | 844953 |
| (1) Beaufort_Sea | 622520 | 527098 | 95422 | 498743 | 123777 |
| (2) Chukchi_Sea | 134120 | 210769 | -76649 | 51 | 134069 |
| (3) East_Siberian_Sea | 378263 | 329380 | 48884 | 311 | 377952 |
| (4) Laptev_Sea | 19790 | 186004 | -166214 | 235245 | -215455 |
| (5) Kara_Sea | 235 | 30387 | -30152 | 15367 | -15132 |
| (6) Barents_Sea | 0 | 18890 | -18890 | 4851 | -4851 |
| (7) Greenland_Sea | 242190 | 235559 | 6631 | 353210 | -111020 |
| (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence | 70138 | 51991 | 18148 | 42247 | 27891 |
| (9) Canadian_Archipelago | 606394 | 367879 | 238515 | 307135 | 299259 |
| (10) Hudson_Bay | 4611 | 4458 | 153 | 1936 | 2674 |
| (11) Central_Arctic | 2852432 | 3003376 | -150944 | 2626511 | 225921 |
The total extent is down 35k km2 (less than 1%) below the 11 year average. The deficit in Chuckchi is more than offset by surpluses in Beaufort and East Siberian. On the European side are deficits in Laptev, Kara and Central Arctic, almost covered by the huge surplus in Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA).
It’s all good. It’s natural.
Try To Remember lyrics by Tom Jones from “The Fantasticks” 1960
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
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Keep the good work up.I see you have got Tamino rattled again. He used a cherry pick argument against you conveniently cutting out 90% of the true values and just using anomalies.
Looking at that Chukchi ice edge one can see extensive thin ice feathering out which might do a similar rapid referee in the next 2 weeks. The CAB east though looks at the moment as if it will need time to spread unless there is also some drift that way.
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Refreeze
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