XDA

Over at the NSIDC, the Warmie mentality is showing itself not in the normal near exultation about the below 'normal' area of Arctic sea ice, but in harping on the supposed thinness and relative youth of the ice, as if to say, yeah it looks OK now, but wait 'til September, you evil deniers, when it will all be open water, BWAHAHAHAHA.
OK, I added the mad scientist laugh, but they now use plan B when the ice extent is above 'normal' for the World, that is, they attack the thickness. Thickness is difficult to measure compared to extent and area--very difficult, as the Caitlin show boaters are finding out. Thereby, empirical refutation of the Warmie claims is submerged under disputed metrics.

And the sea ice extent in the world, and the ice area around both poles is above the 1979 to 2001 'normal' by nearly 600,000 square km. Over at the Cryosphere Today, the Arctic sea ice anomaly is listed as about -400,000 square km, but if you add up each of 14 distinct areas with Arctic sea ice, you only get -230,000 square km, almost all of it far from the Northern Ocean in the Sea of Okhotsk, between Kamchatka and the rest of Siberia just north of Japan. (Risk players know where it is). But things often do not add up at the Cryosphere Today and their flak-catcher never answers my questions to him. I'm not a scientist, so I can be ignored with impunity, I guess.

It is impossible for me to believe that the sea ice around Antarctica is a million square km above 'average' (and was at record high levels through much of 2007) and has been steadily growing over the past 30 years, yet the land and sea around that continent has been warming during the same period. It don't add up.

But the main news is the GISS NASA report that at least half of the Arctic warming lately is blamed not on greenhouse gasses but on soot and aerosol contamination/pollution. Now they tell us. It appears the Warmie hysteria is suffering the death by a thousand cuts. I like it.

The Northern Ocean sea ice reaches its maximum about now each year, and the 'average' extent of the ice is, for the period 1979-2000, about 15.75 million square kilometers in 14 separate areas. Right now, using a new and possibly more reliable satellite sensor system, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), the sea ice extent is 15.25 msk, about .5 msk down, or 3.2%.

The particular areas where the sea ice is down for the NSIDC are: The Sea of Okhotsk (near Kamchatka); Barents Sea (east of Norway); the Greenland Sea; the Bering Sea (north of Alaska) and, Baffin Island/Newfoundland Bay.

This data coincides generally with the still suspect data at the Cryosphere Today, which says that the sea ice area (different from extent) is only 13.6 msk, but, again, that's down only about .6 msk. The areas of ice deficiency are different for this site. The Sea of Okhotsk is about .12 off; the Greenland Sea is about .05 off; the Baffin Island/Newfoundland Bay is off about .05; and, as usual for the last several seasons, Barents Sea is down about .2. All of those measurements are msk and all the other areas are at or just slightly above the 1979 -2000 average. If you added up the down areas and got only .42 msk down rather than the reported .6 msk down, join the puzzled club. The site has not added up for months now.

But let's not get bogged down in detail (if that's not too late). The Northern Ocean sea ice at its greatest area or extent is about 3 or 4% below the 29 year average starting in 1979. Not particularly alarming to me, but of course I'm neither a Warmie nor given to chicken little alarmism.

What about the future? I predict the northern sea ice, at its minimum at the end of summer this year, will be more in area and extent than the last two years and will have indeed recovered (or survived) to 'normal' or at least within 1% of the so called normal. That's where the southern sea ice is at its minimum right now.

Anyone care to bet against me?