By Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo
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12 Sep 07 - The Southern Hemisphere (Antarctica) has quietly set a new record for most ice extent since 1979. The Southern Hemispheric areal coverage is the highest in the satellite record, just beating out 1995, 2001, 2005 and 2006. Since 1979, the trend has been up for the total Antarctic ice extent.
While the Antarctic Peninsula area has warmed in recent years and ice near it diminished during the Southern Hemisphere summer, the interior of Antarctica has been colder and ice elsewhere has been more extensive and longer lasting, which explains the increase in total extent. This dichotomy was shown in a World Climate Report blog posted recently with a similar tale told by Ohio State Researcher David Bromwich, who agreed: "It’s hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now."
Indeed, according the NASA GISS data, the South Pole winter (June/July/August) has cooled about 1 degree F since 1957 and the coldest year was 2004. This winter has been an especially harsh one in the Southern Hemisphere with cold and snow records set in Australia, South America and Africa. We will have recap on this hard winter shortly.
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog ... ice_extent
WOW, Antartic ice is growing big time.
