Antarctic Sea Ice: ‘The beginning of the end!’ – again – Net Zero Watch

Is it game over for the climate yet? Media over-excitement takes off again.
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The great sleeping giant that is Antarctica that — apart from the Antarctic Peninsula — refuses to respond to global warming may just have begun to stir, and the implications are, well, apocalyptic, jokes Dr David Whitehouse @ Net Zero Watch.

According to CNN “Antarctic sea ice hits record lows again. Scientists wonder if it’s “the beginning of the end.” CNN also reports that, “90% of ice around Antarctica has disappeared in less than a decade.”

CNN are not the only media outlets to report on this years’ record low sea ice around Antarctica in apocalyptic terms, other media extremists are available.

For Sky News it’s the accelerating melt of polar regions. For the BBC “There is now less sea-ice surrounding the Antarctic continent than at any time since we began using satellites to measure it in the late 1970s.” All this is technically true, but misleading. When it’s put into context one sees a different picture.

So let’s have a look at the actual satellite data of Antarctic sea ice collected monthly since 1979. The NSIDC gives two data sets for what it calls i) sea ice extent, and ii) sea ice area. So let’s examine both of them.

The first graph is sea ice area, the second sea ice extent [see here].

From the empirical data it is evident that there is hardly any change of sea ice over the 44-year time span. Since 2016 there is a dip with possibly more variability (of which more later), and the lowest month (February) does show a record low, but by hardly anything (and also look at the data for 1992).

Does this actual data look like the beginning of the end to you? Where is CNN’s 90% loss or Sky News acceleration?

Antarctic sea ice evolution has no significant trends along the whole period, but a volume drop is observed since 2016.

Full article here.