Mark Serreze, NSIDC Director: "For Arctic, This Is Definitely The Strangest Winter I'ver Ever Seen"

[hatrack]

Right about now, Arctic sea ice should be building up toward its annual maximum, making most of the region impenetrable to all but the most hardened icebreakers. Instead, January and indeed much of the winter so far has been unusually mild throughout large parts of the Arctic.

A freak storm brought temperatures to near the freezing point, or 32 degrees Fahrenheit, near the North Pole for a short time in late December and early January, and other storms have repeatedly acted like space heaters plopped on top of the globe, turning nascent sea ice to slush and eventually, to open water.

Nothing is as it should be for this time of year across a wide swath of the Arctic. Alaska has had not yet had a winter, with record warmth enveloping much of the state along with anemic snow depth. Sea ice is virtually absent from the Barents and Kara Seas, which constitute a large swath of the Atlantic Arctic, located northeast of Scandinavia and north of the Russian mainland. “For the Arctic this is definitely the strangest winter I’ve ever seen," said Mark Serreze, the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado, which tracks sea and land ice around the world.

EDIT

In Norway's Svalbard Archipelago, the northernmost permanent civilian community on Earth, temperatures were unusually toasty during January, following a deadly December that featured a destructive avalanche. During the period from Jan. 5 to Feb. 3, the average temperature there was 23.5 degrees Fahrenheit, according to meteorologist Bob Henson of Weather Underground. That is 19 degrees Fahrenheit above average for the period, which is an extremely high anomaly for a 30-day period.

EDIT

http://mashable.com/2016/02/05/arctic-sea-ice-hits-record-low-for-january/#5jgMRF7EPiqh

[truedelphi]

1. Although almost all of us here on DU agree about Global Climate change being man-made, it is

Important to start talking about how some very disastrous things that are not being discussed.

Some of these disastrous things are occurring through the policies of Big Companies, and other disastrous things are occurring due to our own personal habits.

The tomographic equipment that many of the big oil drilling firms use in order to detect oil (and other firms use this equipment to look for minerals) that may lie far below the surface - this equipment heats up the local environment and can cause melting of ice and snow and increase in temperatures. So, does our government ban its use? No, of course not.

Just as importantly, the billions of people world-wide who have gotten onto the device band wagon and now carry around and continually utilize devices like cell phones, GPS devices, etc that emit non-ionizing radiation - these activities are also having an effect. Additionally the type of microwave and electro magnetic smog created by cell phone towers and their antennae and also the satellites needed for cell phones and GPS, these also are wrecking havoc on the planet.

[msongs]

2. -10 in fairbanks tonight. and it's been colder. sounds like winter to me nt