With the annual pullback of Arctic Ocean sea ice at an end, it’s clear that this year’s retreat is nowhere near the satellite-era record set in 2012, but it’s also clear that there is still a long-term trajectory toward a largely open-water Arctic in summers in coming decades.
https://dl.dropbox.com/s/xz2vv4q6brsol68/seaice_escalator2%20%28gliss%C3%A9%28e%29s%29.jpg
https://dl.dropbox.com/s/yfn7le8c1pa2nma/seaice_escalator2%20%28gliss%C3%A9%28e%29s%29%201.jpg
The image above is from The Cryosphere Today, a valuable Website maintained by William Chapman and others at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The National Snow and Ice Data Center has not quite officially called the “minimum,” but it is nigh.
In a story on the Arctic ice season in The Guardian, Julienne Stroeve of the National Snow and Ice Data Center put it well:
We are looking at long-term changes and there are going to be bumps and wiggles along the long-term declining trend, but all the climate models are showing that we are eventually going to lose all of that summer sea ice.
If you dare, read David Rose’s ice coverage for a classic example of torqued, sensationalist reporting on the “recovery” of the ice. The best counterpoint to such assertions remains this clever Skeptical Science animated graph:
