The right map appears flawed. The melt area last year was not as big as the red area. He appears to have lumped 6 month old and 18 month old ice together as red. Nice scary effect though.

Also, no matter how thick the ice gets this year, it will still be red on that map. It could be a hundred feet thick, and still get painted red. (Reminds me of a Rolling Stones song.)

NASA studies tell us that the Arctic oscillation the last few years has been unusual, in that ice has been traversing from west to east faster than it did in the previous 30 years. It used to take six years to blow across the Arctic into warm Atlantic waters, but recently it has been taking less than three.

As soon as the AO reverses, another AGW party is over.

First: Off this subject:
NASA chief: global warming treated "almost as a religious issue"

Last May NASA Administrator Michael Griffin injected himself into the global warming debate by questioning whether addressing the problem required all that much urgency.

(Eric Berger)recently had a chance to speak with Griffin, (for a full Q&A, see here) and I asked him what he thought about the incredible response those comments generated.

http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2008/03/nasa_chief_glob.html

See his comments about Dr. Hansen....dip-lo-matic.

Ok, back on: If Mr. Griffin's comments about NASA are true, there still seems to be a spin in the way these articles are written:

"This month, satellite data showed the maximum sea ice extent slightly increased by 3.9 percent over that of the previous three years, but it is still below the long-term average by 2.2 percent. Increases in ice extent occurred in areas where surface temperatures were colder than the historical averages. At the same time, as a result of the export of ice from the Arctic, the area of perennial ice decreased to an all-time minimum, according to the NASA article."

Ice, dis-ap-pear-ing ice, oh my! In layman's terms, or as I understand it, according to the article: The arctic ice cap is continuing its break-up and floating south, so the grandfathered ice is now at an all-time low. (By the way, what exactly is 'all-time'?? another relative term). The thin stuff, created by the colder than average winter 'over some parts of the arctic' means that this ice will also break and float south come summer, the polar bears will all drown, and the igloos upend and become floating turtle shells.

Um....1985-2000...what was the earlier, say 1930's) averages? Heres a link if the Hysterics haven't 'discredited' it.

http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~igor/research/ice/index.php

Is thin ice not normal when new ice is forming ?

My understanding the formation of ice is that an area of "new" ice is formed (although thin) prior to the creation of ice depth.

When considering last season's ice melt, it is hardly alarming that new ice is forming as a thin layer before growing it's thickness.

Can anyone explain why this is not considered in this report ?

The colder-than-average winter over some parts of the arctic has yielded an increase in new sea ice area, but wait a minute, the older (perennial) sea ice that lasts for several years has continued to decrease.

REPLY: They really are getting desperate, aren't they????

DENY DENY DENY THE GLO-BULL WARMING LIE!!!!!!

Some questions pop into my head.

I wonder if thickness matters more than how old the ice is. Also I'm curious about the number of "pressure ridges," where ice piles up, in the newly formed ice.

I wonder if the six-year-old ice was more common in the 1980's because that was at the end of a colder time. Current thickness may be due to the warm AMO cycle, not irreversable warming.

Lastly, (and this shows how suspicious I have become,) I wonder which NASA released this report. NASA seems devided. There seems to be a "Hansen party" and an "Old School."

It is going to be interesting to watch what happens as the ice melts this summer. The lack of volcanic ash in the atmosphere will make the sunlight very strong, so I expect a lot of melting even with the sun cooler due to the dely in the sunspot cycle. I expect there will be a lot of reports, plus a lot of "spin" given to reports.

I don't see how humanity managed in the old days, when nobody had a clue what was happening up in the arctic.

Another AGW fantasy is disproven. Sea level is not rising.

Since instrumentation was installed in 1993 on Tuvalu's main island Funafuti, sea level has shown no discernible trend. There is some inundation evident on islands in Tuvalu, but global warming is not the cause.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/466/story.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10498927

Arctic sea level has been falling by a little over 2mm a year

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5076322.stm

File this one under "Duh!!!". Of course the perennial ice is going to be a lower percentage of total ice when the ice levels is at their peak during winter. Combine that with the record minimum last August, of course there is going to be a higher percentage of new ice. It takes time for new ice to become old ice.

We'll be able to see next summer if the Arctic ice melts again as it did last summer. If it doesn't, I'm sure that there will be some good excuse from the AGW proponents.
Although, I'm still waiting for the explanation for the abundant Antarctic ice.

Congrats on your new daughter. Mine, a 10 yr old, holds me responsible for melting the north pole with my massive 6 cylinder thanks to all those agencies who want to justify their cushy jobs and exercise their newfound authority to subjugate me, by throwing the book at me and my likes for a problem that is either exaggerated or doesn't exist.. (remember the grape vines in England in Roman times). This news seems to be saying that there is more ice but it doesn't matter because we in NASA, paid to dig up bad news, are saying it's the wrong kind of ice? And is it saying that while one type of ice is forming another is melting? And isn't NASA a space agency? Nice bandwagon if you can get on it....

The article is only a way to dredge up the summer loss again. The perennial ice statistic is based on the summer 2007 minimum. After this winter's freeze, we won't know where we stand on perennial ice until September of 2008.

The North Pole lower troposphere temperature anomaly (MSU) has been on the decline since Feb 2005, so unless there's a 2-year lag, temperature had nothing to do with the 2007 decline in sea ice.

http://tinypic.com/fullsize.php?pic=vecev5&s=3&capwidth=false

If the AMO has an impact, it's tough to tell if it's continuing to work its way down, since it's influenced by the overall drop in global SST.

http://tinypic.com/fullsize.php?pic=akwynm&s=3&capwidth=false

The AO is also in a decline after that ugly spike last year.

http://tinypic.com/fullsize.php?pic=v32hzp&s=3&capwidth=false

Brett: Congratulations on the addition to your family.

Per usual, Patrick is correct (in fact I haven't spotted him erring), ice thickness of 'the recent past' referred to was above normal. The AO shift with AMO positive explains the more recent open water and lack of 'old' ice.
Remember the bioterrorism funding post 9/11? That money has dried up; NASA is slipping in one last prime of the AGW pump.

Arctic sea ice extent is greater now than it has been in six out of the last 12 years, and the greatest it has been since 2003.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.jpg

That hardly sounds like a downwards trend.

WHAT?? You mean ice is 3-dimensional and actually has volume?? Well, if we were to believe the Deniers, it's only 2-dimensional and can only measured with area.

The drought is disappearing. The most severe remaining region being a small spot right over Al Gore's home.

http://drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html

Brett:

I hope your wife and daughter are doing as well as can be hoped.

How are you getting to Indy? Running through 70 or across 80?

I am here in Columbus, if you need any thoughts as to local amenities, let me know I will help however I can.

yes, I know everyone, I'm a suckup to the boss.

As far as the topic, do you think that NASA's microwaves might have caused some of the icemelt?

Just kidding, seems to me that the icepack is reloading. Don't you think that has to be done from time to time? I mean, they do mention that they can only go back a couple of decades in the study so it is possible that we are witnessing something that has gone on for millenia.

First the outer limits where new ice formed in 2000 is the same outer limits new ice forms today so that hasn't changed and it must be cold for new ice to form and if its cold new ice will become old ice and old ice becomes older ice, really that right there is one screwy map, where in places there was six year old ice now shows 3-4, wouldn't the old ice still be down there, wouldn't the newer ice melt and the oldest ice be the last to melt, I sure the heck hope Gary fills me in on this.

On the subject of ice, see and that's at about 46 degrees north.

I do wonder about some of the NASA pronouncements and I'm not sure if they know the difference between shuga and a polynya - or shuga forming on a polynya! I have done ice reconnaissance in the Arctic, mostly during the 1960's and 1970's, and wonder where the data went. We could tell first-year ice, second-year ice and multi-year ice from an aircraft, and we saw a lot of rotten multi-year ice in late summer even in those far-off days and we mapped it. It certainly goes back before 1979 and the emergence of satellites, so the "all-time minimum" is highly suspect - but maybe NASA is only concerned with orbital surveillance methods.

Gary G and Patrick --
How arrogant. You trust PH when he gets shot down almost daily.
You trust PH's eyes more than Ph.D's who have devoted thier lives to the subject.

Here is the same data in a nice graphic form. Very convincing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/18/AR2008031802903.html?hpid=moreheadlines

You don't have to be an alarmist or a denier. You do have to think about the consequences of 8 gigatons of CO2.

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe.

Albert Einstein

http://thinkexist.com/quotation/only_two_things_are_infinite-the_universe_and/6993.html

Sorry Josh B - I'm still stuck on figuring out how there will be 36,000,000,000 people on earth in 2100. Dang, my calculator, with extra large numbers ain't workin' Guess I'll have to count on my fingers. It might take a while. Sorry. You're on your own here. I'm clueless. LOL!

The Arctic had a record melt last year. It has recovered to a record or near a record this year. That is good. Isn't this article talking about how "new" the ice is? Not thickness? I'd say more study is need before any conclusions are made about what will happen to the ice this summer.

The USGS study that Paul blogged about earlier, was about developing a new model based on actual ice thickness recordings, in an attempt to better predict how the ice will behave in the future. Here is a link:

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1884&from=rss_home

It would be interesting to see how this new model handles the artic ice charactieristics from this winter.

My "Tunnel" idea will return the thickness of the lost sea ice. It may take a few years to so but computer modeling will verify this. Anyone interested?

Carbon Dioxide data, most of the earth temperature rise in the past 100 years came pre 1960, most of the carbon dioxide released in the atmosphere post 1960. Maybe its keeping it cooler, after all trees take in carbon dioxide and put off oxygen and people take in oxygen and put off carbon dioxide, so the trees are loving life." Patrick Henry gets shot down almost daily", when is this because all I see that he post is mostly facts and the activist/extremist post mostly...where there are several words to use but they post non-facts. My question how does old ice melt before new ice? Or is that new ice just on top of the old ice? Please explain. Looks like a scare map to me, If the old ice did melt, where is the sea rise. Please explain. This is the earth, this is the earth on carbon dioxide, any questions. Yes!

Well, guess all the ice has melted in Washington. 'Man-made' Global Warming continues its relentless march forward.....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080319/ap_on_sc/warming_spring

WASHINGTON - The capital's famous cherry trees are primed to burst out in a perfect pink peak about the end of this month. Thirty years ago, the trees usually waited to bloom till around April 5.
ADVERTISEMENT
click here

In central California, the first of the field skipper sachem, a drab little butterfly, was fluttering about on March 12. Just 25 years ago, that creature predictably emerged there anywhere from mid-April to mid-May.

And sneezes are coming earlier in Philadelphia. On March 9, when allergist Dr. Donald Dvorin set up his monitor, maple pollen was already heavy in the air. Less than two decades ago, that pollen couldn't be measured until late April.

Pollen is bursting. Critters are stirring. Buds are swelling. Biologists are worrying.

"The alarm clock that all the plants and animals are listening to is running too fast," Stanford University biologist Terry Root said.

Blame global warming.

The fingerprints of man-made climate change are evident in seasonal timing changes for thousands of species on Earth, according to dozens of studies and last year's authoritative report by the Nobel Prize-winning international climate scientists. More than 30 scientists told The Associated Press how global warming is affecting plants and animals at springtime across the country, in nearly every state.

article continues.....

gettingwarm: i think PH has it on the ball, and i've yet to see him 'get shot down'....who are your referring as the shooter? you are naive.....is it possible that these Phd's who have 'devoted their lives to the subject' simply know on which side the bread is buttered.....?

gettingwarm,

I noticed your comment about gigatons of CO2. You might want to consider a different gigaton number which is not given adequate attention in understanding the weather on this planet.

On January 20th, 2005... a giant sunspot named "NOAA 720" exploded. The blast sparked an X-class solar flare, the most powerful kind, and hurled a billion-ton cloud of electrified gas (a "coronal mass ejection") into space. Solar protons accelerated to nearly light speed by the explosion reached the Earth-Moon system minutes after the flare--the beginning of a days-long "proton storm."

"The Moon is totally exposed to solar flares," explains solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center. "It has no atmosphere or magnetic field to deflect radiation." Protons rushing at the Moon simply hit the ground--or whoever might be walking around outside.

The January 20th proton storm was by some measures the biggest since 1989. It was particularly rich in high-speed protons packing more than 100 million electron volts (100 MeV) of energy. Such protons can burrow through 11 centimeters of water. A thin-skinned spacesuit would have offered little resistance.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/01/solar-cycle-2-1.html