More good news (way too early to celebrate)

[The Croquist]

The ice in the Arctic is up over 27% from a year ago. The maximum melt was about 9% less then 2007 and the new ice formation seems to be going along at an impressive pace.

I KNOW IT'S STILL LOUSY

My source for daily data, http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm only has data from 2002 so there's not much history yet. We'll have a better handle when the monthly October data comes out in another two plus weeks.

10/15/2008 ice is now better then 2007 and 2005.

I also know that it's just "first-year ice" but all ice started off as first year ice. I would rather have more ice then less ice.

[AndyA]

1. That is good news.

I'm so worried about the polar bears. That image of the mother bear and her cub floating out in the middle of water on a small, melting piece of ice haunts me.

We're supposed to be good custodians of the Earth while we're here, and we're doing so much harm to other creatures who deserve better.

Thanks for posting this, this is the first good news I've heard about the ice in a long time. :)

[NickB79]

2. Is ice volume or ice area up?

Because a whole lot of thin, first-year ice doesn't mean much, as we have seen this year.

[The Croquist]

3. The The IARC-JAXA Information System (IJIS) only posts sea ice area

but I disagree that this years data supports your position. There was 9% more ice at minimum this year then at minimum last year. 9% is significant. Next spring that 9% of first year ice will be multi-year ice. That's a good thing.

[Barrett808]

4. Actually, this isn't good news

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere


The multi-year trend is still strongly negative, and this year's next-to-worst-ever ice melt continues to pull the trend downward.

The situation is very grim in the Arctic.

[bhikkhu]

5. Possibly related to unusual solar activity (or inactivity)

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/06/the-sunspot-mys.html

...an unusual period free of sunspots, which is to say a historically anomalous dearth of solar activity. As the article suggests, in the past this has corresponded to reductions in the heating effect of the sun upon the earth, and so resulted in cooler weather.

Not in any way to suggest (as climate change deniers would) that the sun is entirely responsible for the earth's climate, hot or cold, but there is a current condition that may contribute.