Image: Huge, ‘mysterious’ hole appears in sea ice near Antarctica
The media sounds alarm bells that there is a 30,000 square mile ice hole that opened in the Antarctic sea ice, as if its because of global warming , but they forget to add that this occurred in the 1970’s a s well. Arctic sea ice continues to grow at record pace and Greenland with massive gains to the top of the charts in the S.E. All of there changes were forecast to occur during the Grand Solar Minimum.
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Fast regrowth in Arctic sea-ice outpaces recent years
Ron Clutz writes at Climate Change Dispatch:
Arctic Sea Ice Surges Back During First Half of October
Consider the refreezing during the first half of October through yesterday, adding an average of 96k km2 per day. On the left side, the Laptev Sea has filled in, and just below it, the East Siberian Sea is also growing fast ice from the shore to meet refreezing drift ice.
At the top Kara, Barents and Greenland’s seas are all growing ice. At the bottom, Canadian Archipelago is now full of ice.
The graph compares extents over the first 15 days of October.
Read more here: https://climatechangedispatch.com/arctic-sea-ice-surges-back-during-first-half-of-october/
NOTES:Data from NSIDC’s MASIE sea ice extent data set. Details here: http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g02186_masie/index.html
Google Earth KMZ files of the data are also available here: http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g02186_masie/index.html#kmz_format
NSIDC’s interactive sea-ice extent chart comparing the last 5 years of extent to today shows that the current rate of recovery is doing pretty well:
While this fast refreezing growth is interesting, it doesn’t necessary predict the rest of the freeze and melt season, which are highly dependent on the vagaries of wind and weather.
Ref.: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/10/17/fast-regrowth-in-arctic-sea-ice-outpaces-recent-years/
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Greenland ice stream retreated during a cold period of climate
From the UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI
Ice stream retreats under a cold climate
Why did the Jakobshavn Isbræ ice stream in West Greenland retreat under a cold climate period called the Younger Dryas?
A research article, published in Nature Communications, shows that a warmer ocean surface in central-eastern Baffin Bay triggered the ice retreat during this cold period. The Younger Dryas period occurred 12,900-11,700 years ago and interrupted the atmospheric warming after the last ice age.
Diatoms reveal warm ocean surface in central-eastern Baffin Bay
The published study uses marine fossil diatoms preserved in the sediments to reconstruct past sea surface conditions, including sea surface temperatures, sea ice variability and ocean currents. Diatoms were studied from a ca. 7-meter long sediment core recovered from the ocean floor in 2008. Such sediment cores are windows to the past climate. According to the study, the warmer sea surface temperatures and less-extensive sea ice cover during the Younger Dryas were caused by an enhancement of warmer Atlantic-sourced water inflow to Baffin Bay and increased solar insolation in the Northern Hemisphere.
Understanding climate change
Today, Jakobshavn Isbræ is one of the largest ice streams in Greenland, draining ca. 7% of the ice volume and producing 10% of Greenland’s icebergs. Thus it is a significant contributor to the Greenland Ice Sheet´s mass balance.
– Interactions between ocean, ice sheet and atmosphere are not well understood, yet they are crucial for climate models and for predicting the impacts of the ongoing climate change, says Mimmi Oksman, a researcher at the University of Helsinki and one of the authors of the article.
The results emphasize the importance of the interaction between the ocean and the Greenland Ice Sheet under the ongoing climate warming, showing that a warming ocean can have a drastic influence on the marine-terminating glaciers of Greenland.
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The paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-01155-6