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Old January 29th 17, 08:54 AM posted to uk.sci.weather
JohnD JohnD is offline
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Default [CC] Global Arctic+Antarctic Sea-Ice extent ongoing minimum record, 20 January 2017

"John Hall" wrote in message ...

If the amount of Arctic sea ice is reducing in JANUARY, even if it turns
out to be only for a day or two, that seems remarkable and really brings
it home just how far global warming has gone.
======================

This is for extent, which AIUI is more liable to error, as a parameter
rather than area but interesting nonetheless. But if you look at the NSIDC
extent chart at:

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

you'll see that there was a also a brief net melt in November 2016 and
certainly a stall if not a technical dip in December and again in
mid-January.

What seems to be concerning the experts more than the relatively low current
area/extent values is that a substantial proportion of the arctic ice is
thin; while this will certainly still contribute to the area/extent values
as if it were traditional thicker ice, it will also be easier to melt out
once the spring/summer thaw starts in earnest. So arctic ice _volume_ is
potentially a more interesting parameter, though one tricky to estimate and
not updated publicly on a daily basis AFAIK. So it will be interesting to
see the PIOMAS end-January volume estimate when it hopefully gets released
in around a week's time.