Antarctic Sea Ice Sets New Records In August
By Paul Homewood
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/index.html
Sea ice in the Antarctic continues to set new records, with average extent in August the highest on record at 18.624 million sq km. The previous August high was 18.606 in 2010.
The daily figure for the 31st August was also a record, at 19.031 million sq km, beating the previous record of 18.967 in 2006.
On average, the sea ice in Antarctica reaches its maximum around the 22nd September, when the 1981-2010 mean is 18.581 million sq km, so this year is already well past this figure.
Sea ice area also remains well above normal.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
IPCC Position On Antarctic Sea Ice
There have been many attempts to link increasing sea ice in Antarctica to global warming, but what is the official position?
In their Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 they had this to say.
Unlike in the Arctic, a strong decline in sea ice extent has not been observed in the Antarctic during the period of satellite observations (Section 4.4.2.2). ….. However, Gregory et al. (2002b) find a decline in antarctic sea ice extent in their model, contrary to observations. They suggest that the lack of consistency between the observed and modelled changes in sea ice extent might reflect an unrealistic simulation of regional warming around Antarctica, rather than a deficiency in the ice model. Holland and Raphael (2006) examine sea ice variability in six MMD 20C3M simulations that include stratospheric ozone depletion. They conclude that the observed weak increase in antarctic sea ice extent is not inconsistent with simulated internal variability, with some simulations reproducing the observed trend over 1979 to 2000, although the models exhibit larger interannual variability in sea ice extent than satellite observations.
Translation –
1) The increases in ice extent were contrary to what the models had predicted.
2) They blamed the increase on “variability”.
