For years whenever someone mentioned the decline in sea ice I would respond “but that’s what we would expect to see after the temperature rise from the little ice age”.
In other words, if temperature rises – as we are assured it has – that must mean that there was less sea ice. So, a decline in sea ice did not say anything we did not already know.
However reading climate4you
I came across a graph of total sea ice and that showed that the sea ice had recovered recently:
It certainly shows that the total sea ice is above the average of 1979 to 2013, but what does this tell us as roughly half will be above and half below this line. So, instead I wanted to see whether the 2014 figure had recovered from the “sea ice decline” that had been so wildly trumpeted by alarmists. So, I drew a line by eye through the 1979-1989 maximum sea ice values (because they are using a 13 month average) and now I have the following:
So, global sea ice is within a midges dongle of being back to the 1979-1989 “normal” (although it is only “normal” in the minds of those who wanted the recent decline to be “abnormal” and in fact both the 1979-1989 and the 2014 figures may be abnormally high)
What does it mean
As I started by saying. Sea ice is expected to decline because global temperatures were reported to be higher. However, it appears I was wrong. Because now sea ice is back to “normal” whilst global temperatures are being reported as “high”.
What does this mean? Here are some possible idea:
- Sea ice has very little to do with global temperature and it was just a coincidence it fell when global temperatures rose.
- Sea ice is a leading indicator of global temperature – so now we should expect to see global temperature fall
- There has been a redistribution of temperature so that polar temperatures have dropped and other temperatures rise
- Sea ice is directly connected to global temperature and an increase in sea ice is a strong indicator that global temperatures have also fallen – albeit that for some reason due to the “methodology” used this is not showing in the temperature figures.
The last one is the right one to my mind.
Especially when you loo at the work that others have done regarding the “Quality Adjustments” of the various datasets.
The only certainty is that if sea ice continues to increase, that it will be heralded as “yet more proof of the impact of global warming”.
Only until it becomes obvious to the whole world population that the world is cooling and quickly. I may not live to see it, but it appears to be coming.