Chris Nelder 🤘Jul 25, 2023

This chart is making the rounds and freaking out a lot of people, but what does it really show?

There’s definitely a detectable departure from recent historical averages this year. Here’s what the UC Boulder National Snow and Ice Data Center has to say about sea ice extent this year: https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

The question is: How well does the Antarctic ice recover when it peaks later this year? And what is the multi-year trend, especially as this year’s super El Niño fades?

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Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis | Sea ice data updated daily with one-day lag

Show threadChris Nelder 🤘

It’s really too early to say how meaningful it is from a climate perspective, since it takes 10-20 years of data to form a recognizable climate trend.

If there is a shift from the 1981-2010 baseline, that’s useful to know but the meaning is unclear because we don’t know what that trend looked like pre-1981 with such high resolution.

If Antarctic ice doesn’t recover year after year after year, and then the same trend happens in the Arctic as well…then that would be significant.

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Jul 25, 2023 at 5:28pmWeb