Wednesday, September 24, 2008
The Weather on Top of the World
It's freezing now in Sveagruva, Spitsbergen (a mining town in Svalbard, at about 78 degrees north--a good distance still from the North Pole) and the forecast is for freezing (the high is supposed to be 30 degrees F) for the next few days (and possibly for the next 9 months). The sea lags a few weeks behind the air. When the sea ice starts to grow, it can do so at a million square kilometers a week. The ice that survived this Summer's melting is by definition old ice and is greater by a little less than 10% than what was old ice after last year's Summer. We'll see how the Northern Ocean recovers from the annual melt. I bet that when it reaches its maximum at the end of Winter, there will be at least 15% more ice than at that time the year before.
The Antarctic sea ice is a million square kilometers down from last year at this time, but last year was a record and it's pretty much normal now. The head of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (Walt Meier) explained recently why that sea ice, around Antarctica, doesn't matter to the theory of anthropogenic global warming, but it's not like it's on Mars or something. How can the North be an important tell tale about the climate and the South be just so much chopped liver? I mean it is a theory about global warming, right?
Labels: Global Cooling
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 9:14 PM 
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No, it's not pretty much normal now, it's below the average. The trend line is going down. While it didn't beat last year's record, it will again take a few years of increasing minimums to reverse the current trend. You can be very proud in your wonderful prediction, but if you were playing poker you'd still be in the hole.
The sea ice in the north is below the 1979-2000 average but the Antarctic ice is right at that 'normal' so the Antarctic sea ice is pretty much normal now. It really helps to read the post before you comment.
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