Antarctic sea ice at record low for end of June, warns Met Office
In this article I explore recent claims that Antarctic sea ice for June is at a record low and that we should all be concerned
On Friday 30th June 2023 at 14:46 Sky News published this article…
…which was based on this blog from the Met Office published earlier that same day (10:57 to be precise)….
Is this true and what does it mean?
No Warning Issued
The first thing we need to establish is that the Met Office did not issue a warning of any sort. Nothing in their informative blog borders on the calamitous, apocalyptic, dire or dangerous. Let’s have a look at some of their actual words:
“At the end of June, the extent of sea ice should be building to a mid-point between the maximum and the minimum. However, this year the ice is expanding very slowly”
“The current extent is extraordinarily low: it is in excess of 2.5 million square kilometres below average for the time of year”
“Researchers around the world are striving to understand why the extent of Antarctic sea ice isn’t coming back at the rate it should be.”
“It is too early to speculate whether ice extent will remain at extremely low levels.”
The scariest sentence is arguably this one:
“There is still time this season for the ice to recover but given the record lows we have seen we have to remain concerned about the likelihood of a record low winter maximum.”
The basis for this concern is not explained. Record low winter ice extent will mean an easier time for shipping and base supply – a good thing! Nothing will happen to sea levels (check this next time you treat yourself to a G&T with ice) – a good thing! What might well happen is that absence of a decent sea ice buffer zone means the ice shelves will get thumped more than usual by heaving Antarctic seas and this may well cause ice shelves to flex and crack. This happens from time to time so really isn’t a particular cause for concern. In fact, and as it turns out, Antarctic ice shelves have experienced only minor changes in surface melt since 1980 – here’s the study wot says so.
In sum, nothing untoward will come of a record low sea ice extent this coming Antarctic winter in terms of the planet, biosphere and civilisation. The continent could easily experience record levels of snow, ice and freezing temperatures regardless of what sea ice is doing. These are neither good things or bad; they just are. What this mention of ‘concern’ does actually do is open the door to the topic of climate change via the usual channel of alarmism. It is this highly irresponsible approach that we should be concerned about.
Is It Climate Change?
Climate change sneaks into the back room via these words:
Higher air temperatures and anomalous atmospheric circulation patterns around the continent could be a part of the issue.
Note the use of “could be”.
Anybody who has been following my Antarctic Land Surface Temperature Series, that kicked off with this article, will realise just how unreliable base station records are, favouring data collection at warmer coastal locations during the milder spells. Then there’s what I’m calling BADWARM – localised warming arising from base development. In my most recent article I establish a grand continental land temperature anomaly series that was derived from 17 long-series bases, which revealed lack of warming since 1979; a finding confirmed by the UAH NSST v6.0 satellite record. That’s pretty strong evidence that Antarctic air temperatures have not been rising despite the Met Office suggesting the possibility without any evidence to back the notion.
Nevertheless, something peculiar is going on and evidence of an enhanced melt pattern that kicked-off in 2016 was presented in this article. I shall be investigating this strange situation in part 4 of my Antarctic Sea Ice Index series, and especially so now because it lies at the heart of this media scare story. Anomalous air circulation patterns imho are a much better bet and, of course, I’ll be looking at sea surface temperature since warmer seas should be the driver behind ice melt above all things.
At this stage we might conclude that climate change of some sort is a possibility but exactly what do we mean by this? Waving our hands about and declaring that it must be man-made climate change is pretty idiotic given Antarctic sea ice extent has been steadily growing since 1979, reaching a peak in 2014:
That sudden and inexplicable drop between 2015 and 2016 is what we need to get our head around because something changed big time back then to give us this record June low.
It might be the way we decode the satellite stream, it might be revisions to software, it might be anomalous air circulation; it might even be a surge in ocean floor volcanic activity. There’s a great deal to consider if we are being properly scientific about this and not resorting to churnalism.
But Is It True?
Yes indeed! If we access the servers of NOAA’s National Snow and Ice Data Center and download estimates of daily sea ice extent since 1994, thence to crunch monthly means by year we arrive at this slide:
The current year is scraping the barrel but, as we’ve seen from the first slide, the problem began abruptly back in 2016. To my way of thinking Antarctic sea ice entered a new phase back then and we’ve yet to figure out why. Until then it might be useful not to throw soup on priceless works of art and it might be better not to resort to tantrums with super glue. I’m not sure either of these actions will help us understand why Antarctic sea ice does what it does.