"Col" wrote in message
...

"Bernard Burton" wrote in message
...
This afternoon's noaa images of the Iceland area show the drift/pack ice
is
now within 60km if the northwest tip of Iceland (Nord Cap). The East
Greenland ice is probably near its maximum area about now.
The area can be seen from an altitude of 845 km in:
http://www.btinternet.com/~wokingham...2-f-grn-e.html


I have been looking at this:
http://129.13.102.67/wz/pics/brack5.gif
over the past few days and have noticed that the extent of ice is larger
than I can ever recall seeing it over the past few years at least, even
allowing for the fact that we are now at the max ice time of year.

I believe that even in the good old days before global warming it was
very rare for there to be ice all the way from Greenland to Iceland and yet
now we are not too far off that.

Is there anything significant in this I wonder, have things been much
colder than average up there this year?

It may be due to warmth rather than cold. Weather and climate can play
strange tricks. For instance more snow can be the result of warming
because it needs water vapour and cold to form, and water vapour is
the result of warm seas. Here, there could be more ice flowing out of
the Arctic because the ice there is thinner due to global warming.
Thinner ice will break up more easily, and also flow faster in surface
currents.

Cheers, Alastair.