Martini Meltdown

The Sunday Times has reached a new height of incoherence with its science editor's, (Jonathan Leake) column on Arctic ice cap in 'death spiral.'

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Nothing could be further from the truth. The ice cover in the Antarctic has recently reached a new all-(recorded)-time extent and the ice cover in the Arctic appears to be on a similar path. No wonder as the frost-free days in the Arctic, above 80 N have been fewer in the last two summers and the last winter in North America was brutally cold and long.

Danish Records

The best records of temperature in the Arctic are those by the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) in Copenhagen. That's not surprising as Greenland belongs to Denmark and they have a vital interest in knowing the facts about temperature and ice there. You can find their daily records, open and free at ocean.dmi.dk . Of particular interest are their daily records of the temperature at the latitude above 80 N, from 1958 onwards and their sea ice extent with a 30% minimum coverage and excluding coastal zones. Especially the latter clearly shows that the Arctic sea ice extent is anything but dwindling. See for yourself in the plot below (the thick black line refers to 2014): Fig.: Arctic sea ice extent in million km^2, 2005 to 2014; source: DMI. Clearly, that graph shows rather an average to high ice extent, not a "polar ice meltdown." Perhaps the Sunday Times' science editor was reminiscing about the ice cubes in his martini when he penned that column rather than sea-ice in the Arctic. That ice ain't melting and the polar bears are thriving.

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