One of the recent breathless news reports out of the climatistas in the media was that Arctic sea ice coverage was approaching an all-time low.
In the words of one Mark Serreze, director for the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSDIC) “… there has never been such a warm, crazy winter in the Arctic.” He went on to observe that the heat has been relentless and global warming is to blame.
The problem is that sea ice extent is generally on track with previous years. Serreze also made the same claim in 2007, predicting that all sea ice would be gone by 2012. Perhaps he thought we forgot. This year, sea ice coverage is well within the mean coverage of the satellite era which started in 1979.
Actual plots of sea ice coverage have shown that total coverage has actually increased a bit over the last decade. Now this year it is true that average temperatures in the Arctic has been warmer.
The Danish Meteorological Institute has shown that the average Arctic temperature this year has been in some times and places as much as 15 degrees warmer than normal, averaging -20 C (about -4 F). Not gonna melt a whole lot of ice at -4F or -20C despite what the government employees want us to believe.
There have been a lot of Obama employees predicting an ice free Arctic over the last seven years, but the ice has done just fine.
Oh, by the way, since 1979, ice coverage around Antarctica has grown by 33% which had the additional benefit of slowing the rise in sea levels.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He is a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
