"Excess" Antarctic Sea Ice Area Now 97% the Size of Greenland's IceCap

NSIDC Sea Ice Daily Reports 1979-2014 ^ | 08 May 2014 | RACookPE1978

[Robert A Cook PE]

All data from today’s WUWT (May 8) Sea Ice Page.

1. “Excess” total sea ice area anomaly is now greater than 1.050 million sq km’s.

Hmmmn. An “excess” total sea ice area anomaly (which combines both the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice areas together) approaching the size of Hudson Bay.

2. “Excess” Antarctic sea ice area is now 1.67 Million sq km’s … Or 97% the area of the entire Greenland ice cap. (A fact which 97% of government-paid climate scientists in the Obama administration will chose to ignore.)

3. By itself, “Excess” Antarctic sea ice area is now back over 1.67 Mkm^2 … a level only reached 5 times before.

A level NEVER reached between 1979 and 2007 in the modern (global warming) era, but has been passed five times in the 7 years between 2007 and 2014. Obviously, the more CO2 is in the air, the more Antarctic sea ice area keep increasing, right?

Combine this with the "Inconvenient Fact" that actual measured satellite global temperatures have NOT increased since 1996 ... Makes Obama seem a bit - premature in claiming today that global warming is a national crisis?

4. “Excess” Antarctic sea ice area in 2014 is now about 1.0 Mkm^2 GREATER than 2013′s sea ice area on this date last year. And 2013 set a record-breaking maximum Antarctic sea ice area in late December. Makes you wonder what will come later in this year.

5. And the Great Lakes sea ice – which is NOT included in the NSIDC’s “sea ice area” calculations! – has not yet melted away – but we are now in the second week in May. Steel, iron ore, coal production are already being affected, companies have already announced second quarter incomes and jobs are being affected in the Great Lakes region.

Now, Arctic sea ice is of course melting, and Arctic sea ice area has been dropping since early April as it does every year. Total sunlight onto the Arctic is increasing, and will increase until June 22 – about 5 weeks from now. Arctic sea ice will continue melting through the long summer days up north. But Arctic sea ice will continue decreasing its albedo until late July – decreasing from its present 0.93 to towards its low of 0.45 or so in July. But by mid-September when Arctic sea ice is at its minimum and Antarctic sea ice will be near its maximum, the Antarctic sea ice edge will be irradiated by five TIMES as much solar energy per square meter than the Arctic sea ice edge.

So, if 5 times the solar radiation falls on 1.67 million “extra” square kilometers of newly-frozen “excess” Antarctic sea ice than falls on a missing 0.4 Mkm^2 of Arctic sea ice, what happens to the planet’s total heat balance?

Do we not cool off even more?

[jpsb]

Bump

[zeugma]

And when a big hunk of it shears off, as it inevitably will, they'll claim that that is globull warming too. These whackadoodles can't be reasoned with.

[Wuli]

Those crazy authors. How dare they use actual data and facts and not self-serving, jerrrymandered “computer models”. Just wait until the IRS and ABC/CBS/CNN/MSNBC/NBC/NPR/NLSlimes find out, someone will have to investigate the authors. /sarc

[PoloSec]

These are the facts of the underclass, how dare they challenge the King, the facts of King Zero are immutable.

Off with their heads!

[octex]

I hope some FReeper who knows how will send this article to Eric Bolling and Bob Beckel (co-hosts on The Five on FNC).

Beckel is constantly pushing the global warming mantra and Eric is just the opposite.

[Manly Warrior]

An obscure but very interesting and important fact mentioned was the increased albedo effect from the larger ice in the Antarctic. Albedo, or reflective loss of solar radiation (by the ice) effectively cools the earth as the heat energy that would have been absorbed by open water is not absorbed to the same extent by ice, and is reflected into the atmosphere and into space. The loss of solar energy by albedo is limited by the insulating effect of the atmosphere, but the overall loss would be greater than the gain. net effect=cooling

[Excellence]

“Global warming” is so yesterday! Get with the program! It’s “Climate Disruption” now!

[Robert A Cook PE]

An obscure but very interesting and important fact mentioned was the increased albedo effect from the larger ice in the Antarctic. Albedo, or reflective loss of solar radiation (by the ice) effectively cools the earth as the heat energy that would have been absorbed by open water is not absorbed to the same extent by ice, and is reflected into the atmosphere and into space. The loss of solar energy by albedo is limited by the insulating effect of the atmosphere, but the overall loss would be greater than the gain. net effect=cooling

Albedo works “against” the “We are melting all of the Arctic sea ice and will perish” syndrome so often propagandized.

First, ALL of the Arctic sea ice expends (freezes) and contracts (melts out again) like a “beanie cap” roughly centered on the north pole. Working out the arithmetic and geometry, you can pretty accurately summarize that “Arctic sea is at its maximum at latitude 71 north each year in early April, and is at its minimum at latitude 79-80 north each fall in mid-September.)

So it cycles between 71 north and 80 north.

Antarctic sea ice also expands and contracts: But much, much closer to the equator (at a LOWER altitude). Antarctic sea ice is at its minimum in late February at latitude 66 south, and expands until it reaches its maximum in mid-September at latitude 59-60 south!

Because the Antarctic sea is is closer tot he equator at all times of the year, it reflects much more sunlight than the Arctic sea ice does on an annual total basis. You have to play some mathematics to account for the changing solar output each day, the changing solar elevation angles, the changing tilt of the earth, the changing ice edge extents, etc ... but the Antarctic sea ice controls how much sunlight is reflected back into space 7 months of the year (September-March), and the smaller arctic sea ice only 5 months of the year (April-May-June-July-August).

Also, the Arctic sea ice tends to be 50% multi-year ice, so its gets dirtier and dust-covered. This reduces its albedo significantly during the summer: going from a clean & pristine 0.93 albedo to as low as 0.45 in June and July.

The Antarctic sea ice almost completely melts each Antarctic summer. So, each antarctic winter, spring and fall it is a fresh surface often covered with fresh snow and no industrial or “desert” dust. (No land area in the south, just the ice-covered high plateaus of Antarctica itself.)

So, any “excess” antarctic sea ice edge in September reflects over 5 times the energy that the same area of arctic sea ice would.

[qam1]

The Sea Ice growth at Antarctica is quite amazing

It's 25% above normal right now and not only is it a record high, it's about 10% higher than the previous record (2009)!!!!

See, http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/antarctic.sea.ice.interactive.html for a comparison of previous years. This year is in yellow and look how far it's above the previous years.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Good display.

See also this showing the growth over time of Antarctic sea of the Antarctic sea ice anomaly.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png

[MrB]

See? It proves there’s “Climate Disruption”...

now about that carbon tax.

[qam1]

The excess Antarctic ice is just as much evidence of global warming as the missing Arctic ice, silly.

Yep, the Fraudsters excuse is that the melting ice from the land at Antarctica is lowing the salinity in the seas around Antarctica, thus raising the freezing point of the water which is causing more ice to form

Of course the go silent when you confront them by asking if melting land ice is causing the record sea ice, then how come they same isn’t happening in the Arctic? We are always hearing about how Greenland & Alaska Glaciers are melting aren’t we? So shouldn’t there be record sea ice around them and the Arctic as a whole?

Nope, no answer. I guess to the Fraudsters Physics work differently depending on which Hemisphere you are in, remember the Fraudsters are the same people who think Heat from Global Warming can sink below cold and “hide” in the deep ocean

Also, from 2000 – 2007 Antarctica was losing sea ice. This prompted the 2007 IPCC report to predict that Antarctic sea ice would continue to decline and maybe soon accelerate to match the Arctic and the poor penguins were going to die. Of course, right on queue, the Antarctic reverse itself and continues to hit record highs

So if Global Warming is causing increase in sea ice now, what caused the decrease in 2000 – 2007? They can't answer that either.

[jpsb]

All true, snow cover in North America and Eurasia performs a similar function in the Northern Hemisphere as sea ice does in the S.H. I see on cryoshere that there is still a great deal of snow on the ground at higher latitudes in the N.H. So planet wide cooling would not be surprising.

One thing that you posted on at WUWT that I found very interesting was that open Arctic waters where in fact a heat/energy loss for the planet most of the year. More energy begin radiated into space then absorbed by sunlight from a low inclined Sun. I tried to find some numbers on this but was unable to. I think you are correct on this.