Icy reality cools the climate cultists(Above avg ice in Arct

[x-y-no]

It is a snide, flippant, one-sided article that is completely wrong. The arctic is down over a million square kilometers of ice coverage over average. Last year was an amazing record, which may not be beaten this year. But that has nothing to do with the trend.

I see this all the time. Over what average? The last 30 years? You (generic you) gonna base a whole movement on 30 years of data...that if you included the south pole TOO it would be a wash? What about last century? There is ice in placed today that was totally void 100 years ago.

Who's to say that your 30 year average isn't the top end of the long term average? What about 1000 years ago compared to today? No comparison. What about Roman Era Max?

Then you can compare to the Maunder minimum and the Sporer minimum.

Averages are just the middle between two extremes.

Well sure we can argue about what's a reasonable "average" but it seems to me absolutely any average of all polar ice, even something as short as the 30 year average, is more meaningful than "more ice than normal in the Arctic waters north of the Svalbard archipelago" for some unspecified period during this summer season - which is what the posted article attempts to offer as evidence that there is no trend of loss of polar ice.

And I don't know how you conclude that it would be a wash if the south pole is included - there are significant uncertainties but as far as I'm aware the mass balance of continental ice in East Antarctica is pretty much flat - but with significant loss in West Antarctica and indications of accelerating ice flow in a number of areas. Most probably Antarctica isn't losing much ice mass (and that's no surprise to climate modelers) but it almost certainly is losing some.

[Air Force Met]

And I don't know how you conclude that it would be a wash if the south pole is included - there are significant uncertainties but as far as I'm aware the mass balance of continental ice in East Antarctica is pretty much flat - but with significant loss in West Antarctica and indications of accelerating ice flow in a number of areas. Most probably Antarctica isn't losing much ice mass (and that's no surprise to climate modelers) but it almost certainly is losing some.

Because if you include last years antarctic summer anomaly...its b/w .5 and 2 million sq km. The winter anomaly is near the last 30 yr avg...as it the north pole's winter average.

The numbers do match your claims. There is more sea ice than normal in the southern hemisphere...not less.

[x-y-no]

Oh, I see. You're talking about sea ice only. I was talking about Antarctic Ice mass in total.

But the Antarctic situation is entirely different from the Arctic one - you have a polar continent surrounded by a sea in the Antarctic, you have a polar ocean in the Arctic. That means that the mechanisms of sea ice formation are not equivalent. How much of the Antarctic sea ice anomaly is due to increased calving of coastal ice? How about increased amplitude in perturbations of the Antarctic air mass bringing extreme cold air off the continent? How about changes in precipitation rate affecting salinity (and thereby freezing temperature?) How about changes in upwelling?

Also, the prediction from the last couple of decades of climate modeling has been the the Antarctic would remain stable for quite some time whilst the Arctic is predicted to warm more rapidly than any other region.

[xironman]

I see this all the time. Over what average? The last 30 years?

There have been numerous reconstructions, including Chapman's that I mentioned on the other thread, all show the same trend over the past 100 years.

There is more sea ice than normal in the southern hemisphere...not less.

Not for the past month or so.



Longer term averages show no significant change in the Antarctic for the satellite era, though whaling records show a decrease over the last century.

[Sanibel]

A British poster on another website said the 'Telegraph' is England's equivalent to Fox News. So take such authoritative articles with a grain of salt. The title itself verges on tabloid-like denegration. A major clue about the credibility of information from the author is how he manages to connect "tax and redistribute wealth" with a global warming topic.

Nothing in the article about the continued decline of worldwide glaciers, which I suppose is "natural"...

[Tampa Bay Hurricane]

Global Warming would energize the jet stream meaning
extreme temperature variations- very hot in the summer,
very cold in the winter. That is where the energy would go.