It's Ba-ack! Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Anomaly Chart Heading For -3 Million Sq. Kilometers

[hatrack]

[XemaSab]

It's on the way back up

[hatrack]

3. Ah! My apologies - I've been squinting a lot lately!

Good thing I'm heading for the eye doctor next month!

I feel :silly:

[XemaSab]

5. No worries

That chart is teh tiny. :P

[dtotire]

7. Artic Sea Ice

It reached a maximum of 13 million square kilometers in Mid-March. Check back in March; if it is under that figure it will confirm something is happening.

[Flabbergasted]

1. What's that mean? nt

[Systematic Chaos]

12. It measures how much the area of the Arctic Ocean...

...is covered with ice and compares it to the normal for the time of year. The result you see is the departure from the norm measured in millions of km squared.

Because of the warming of the globe the amount of ice this past summer shrunk to the lowest ever recorded by almost 3 million km^2. It's currently catching back up to where it should be, BUT because it will be much thinner ice it will be that much easier to melt next summer, thus the probable start of a vicious cycle is underway and we're the lucky ones who get to try and live with the consequences. :(

[Flabbergasted]

13. Thanks. nt

[itsrobert]

2. I'm guess that's good news?

hopefully

[hatrack]

4. Yes, Xema has corrected - it's November and the Arctic Ocean is . . . . .

REFREEZING!!

[phantom power]

8. re-freezing, but how thick?

[XemaSab]

9. First year ice is typically thin

I don't think they have the technology to measure thickness per se though.

[phantom power]

10. Just so. I think that accounts for the fast "recovery" in winter.

It's ice, Jim, but not as we know it. And it will disappear at least as fast come spring.

[XemaSab]

11. A lot of it isn't really even ice

It's salty slush.

Older ice has the salty brine flushed out of it.

I think this stuff is going to fall apart like single-ply toilet paper next summer... and then some. :(

[november3rd]

6. 2 measures

http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20071001_pressrelease.html

apparently, the two tell-tale signs are 1) the date of the minimum expanse of ice. The later in the summer/fall the minimum occurs, the more it is viewed as a sign of systemic warming; and 2) the extent of the ice at the date of the minimum. it seems that this year the minimum set a record--by a wide margin, for diminution of sea ice area.