Wasn’t Sea Ice Supposed to be Disappearing?
I’m totally confused. The world was supposed to be ending, and one alleged sign was the disappearance of sea ice. But the ice is back. Where’s all that warming? (It’s chilly out–I really want to know where that warming went!)
Rapid growth spurt leaves amount of ice at levels seen 29 years ago.
Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.
Ice levels had been tracking lower throughout much of 2008, but rapidly recovered in the last quarter. In fact, the rate of increase from September onward is the fastest rate of change on record, either upwards or downwards.
The data is being reported by the University of Illinois’s Arctic Climate Research Center, and is derived from satellite observations of the Northern and Southern hemisphere polar regions.
Each year, millions of square kilometers of sea ice melt and refreeze. However, the mean ice anomaly — defined as the seasonally-adjusted difference between the current value and the average from 1979-2000, varies much more slowly. That anomaly now stands at just under zero, a value identical to one recorded at the end of 1979, the year satellite record-keeping began.
Someone had better tell Mother Earth to get with the program. Everything is supposed to be getting worse and we expect her to stop turning Al Gore into a liar!