Data from the 2005-06 season have not yet been analyzed.

So what on earth has Rodger the splodger been arsing on about?

NASA Finds Arctic Replenished Very Little Thick Sea Ice in 2005

Forgive the extent of the following missive:

A new NASA study has found that in 2005 the Arctic replaced very
little of the thick sea
ice it normally loses and replenishes each year. Replenishment of this
thick, perennial sea
ice each year is essential to the maintenance and stability of the
Arctic summer ice cover.

The findings complement a NASA study released in fall 2006 that found
a 14-percent
drop in this perennial ice between 2004 and 2005. The lack of
replenishment suggests
that the decline may continue in the near future.

Perennial ice coverage fluctuates seasonally for two reasons: summer
melting and the
transport of ice out of the Arctic. When perennial ice, which is three
or more meters (10
or more feet) thick, is lost in these ways, new, thinner, first-year
seasonal ice typically
replaces it. Some of this seasonal ice melts in the following summer,
and some is thick
enough to survive and replenish the perennial ice cover.

"Recent studies indicate Arctic perennial ice is declining seven to 10
percent each
decade," explained Ron Kwok of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif.
"Our study gives the first reliable estimates of how perennial ice
replenishment varies
each year at the end of summer. The amount of first-year ice that
survives the summer
directly influences how thick the ice cover will be at the start of
the next melt season."

Using satellite data from NASA's QuikScat and other data, Kwok studied
six annual
cycles of Arctic perennial ice coverage from 2000 to 2006. The
scatterometer instrument
on QuikScat sends radar pulses to the surface of the ice and measures
the echoed radar
pulses bounced back to the satellite. These measurements allow
scientists to differentiate
the seasonal ice from the older, perennial ice.

Kwok found that after the 2005 summer melt, only about four percent of
the nearly 2.5
million square kilometers (965,000 square miles) of thin, seasonal ice
that formed the
previous winter survived the summer and replenished the perennial ice
cover. That was
the smallest replenishment seen in the study. As a result, perennial
ice coverage in
January 2006 was about 14 percent smaller than the previous January.

Kwok examined how movement of ice out of the Arctic affected the
replenishment of
perennial sea ice in 2005. That year, the typically small amount of
ice that moves out of
the Arctic in summer was unusually high -- about seven percent of the
perennial ice
coverage area. Kwok said the high amount was due to unusual wind
conditions at Fram
Strait, an Arctic passage between Antarctic Bay in Greenland and
Svalbard, Norway.
Troughs of low atmospheric pressure in the Greenland and Barents/
Norwegian Seas on
both sides of Fram Strait created winds that pushed ice out of the
Arctic at an increased
rate.

The effects of ice movement out of the Arctic depend on the season.
When ice moves out
of the Arctic in the summer, it leaves behind an ocean that does not
refreeze. This, in
turn, increases ocean heating and leads to additional thinning of the
ice cover.

These findings suggest that the greater the number of freezing
temperature days during
the prior season, the thicker the ice cover, and the better its
chances of surviving the next
summer's melt. "The winters and summers before fall 2005 were
unusually warm," Kwok
said. "The low replenishment seen in 2005 is potentially a cumulative
effect of these
trends."

Kwok also examined the 2000-2006 temperature records within the
context of longer-
term temperature records dating back to 1958. He found a gradual
warming trend in the
first 30 years, which accelerated after the mid-1980s. "The record
doesn't show any hint
of recovery from these trends," he stated. "If the correlations
between replenishment area
and numbers of freezing and melting temperature days hold long-term,
its expected the
perennial ice coverage will continue to decline."

Kwok points to a possible trigger for the declining perennial ice
cover. In the early 1990s,
variations in the North Atlantic Oscillation, a large-scale
atmospheric seesaw that affects
how air circulates over the Atlantic Ocean, were linked to a large
increase in Arctic ice
export. It appears the ice cover has not yet recovered from these
variations.

"We're seeing a decreasing trend in perennial ice coverage," he said.
"Our study suggests
that, on average, the area of seasonal ice that survives the summer
may no longer be large
enough to sustain a stable perennial ice cover, especially in the face
of accelerating
climate warming and Arctic sea ice thinning."

Data from the 2005-06 season have not yet been analyzed.

The study appeared March 2 in Geophysical Research Letters.

For more information about QuikScat, visit: http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm
..


I had no link to subject you to but this.