A friend writes:
As reported on Cryosphere Today based on NSIDC data, sea ice area today is 2.92 million square kilometres. The record area set on September 7th 2011 was 2.917439 million square kilometres and we are looking at this record broken perhaps (monday, august 20). I know the extent is often and widely bandied about, but that figure is deceptive, because it doesn’t account for the open water between ice-floes.
Sea Ice is crashing to a new record low area, and we are still some 3 weeks, or more, away from the bottom. This is an important development.
I’m traveling on monday, but best info sources will be Cryosphere Today, Neven’s Sea Ice Blog, and of course, NSIDC.
Peter, you wouldn’t happen to have any footage of Joe Bastardi making another ridiculous prediction about this year’s low, as he did for last year’s?
I don’t think Bastardi made a prediction this year. WUWT made another bad one. We’ll cover that and other predictions at SkS after we reach this year’s minimum.
If you want to see what Bastardi has to say about Arctic sea ice these days, you can try this article from USA Today July 31st. But be forewarned, put on your head vise first – it’s painful.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/story/2012-07-31/Joe-Bastardi-WeatherBELL-Analytics/56623728/1
Thanks for the heads up Dana. I usually go for the woolen mittens because they don’t leave a handprint on my forehead.
“perhaps when the Atlantic flips cold…..” wtf?
Bastardi has learned to make predictions far out enough that no-one will remember or he’ll likely be long dead.
He’s big on the multi-decadal oscillations as the real drivers of hot or cold weather.
His point about the AO, which he’s addressed elsewhere is that he expects a shift to a colder AO to drive temps down to 1970s levels in 20 – 30 years.
That gives him a lot of breathing space to invent an excuse for being wrong – again.
Clever, self-serving strategy. So he knows he’s full of shit then if he’s made that behavioural change consciously. He’d have more cred if he’d man up and admit he’s wrong. What next, a prediction of an ice age, sometime in the next 1000000 years?
http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2012/08/new-arctic-cyclone-north-of-greenland.html
To boot there is another cyclone developing in the artic. This scatters the ice and stirs up the waters bringing the warmer waters to the surface. This seems to be the catalst to accelerate further melt in the artic ice.
What is the effect of Arctic cyclones aka polar vortices in the winter when they’re stronger?
Do they increase the rate of freezing or diminish it?
The latest CT update at 2.877 million now puts it below the previous record low.
In that USA today link, Bastardi is claiming the IPCC said Arctice Sea Ice would be gone by now?
Really? If anything the IPCC has been shockingly conservative on sea ice loss.
If I recall their AR4 projections of an ice-free summer is not until 2080 or later.