Arctic

NSIDC: Arctic shortcuts open up; decline pace steady

Fresh from its Olympic-record in denier debunking, the National Snow and Ice Data Center has released a new update: Sea ice extent is declining at a fairly brisk and steady pace. Surface melt has mostly ended, but the decline will continue for two to three more weeks because of melt from the bottom and sides […]

A new Olympic record for retraction of a mistaken analysis of NSIDC data

The gold medal goes to Steven Goddard of The Register. On Friday, Aug. 15, he published a scathing article, “Arctic ice refuses to melt as ordered: There’s something rotten north of Denmark” attacking the National Snow and Ice Data Center plot of Arctic Sea Ice Extent (below) that I and pretty much everyone else on […]

Note to media: Enough with the multiple hedges on climate science!

In an otherwise fascinating story on the growing “icebreaker gap” in the rapidly defrosting Arctic Ocean, NYT reporter Andy Revkin writes: Even with the increasing summer retreats of sea ice, which many polar scientists say probably are being driven in part by global warming caused by humans, there will always be enough ice in certain […]

Umbra on eco-conversions

Dear Umbra, In all sorts of corporate environmental reports, you see claims that compare apples to oranges — “By reducing our emissions by X pounds this year, we’ve saved the equivalent of 17 gazillion trees.” Or “If every person in the U.S. bought our eco-friendly product, we could save all the baby harp seals.” OK, […]

Arctic sea ice declines sharply in August

The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported Monday that in the first 10 days of August, Arctic sea ice extent declined one million kilometers. Sea ice is now disappearing on a daily basis nearly 50 percent faster than it typically does this time of year. So the race is on again to see whether […]

Global warming unleashes ‘world’s largest land predators’ on humans

It could be the premise of a new horror movie — based on an all-too-true story. We have “a new and unusual threat: a polar bear stuck on land due to climate change”: Five scientists studying shorebirds in northern Alaska had to themselves take flight after a polar bear showed up at a time of […]

Alaska claims protecting wildlife would hurt tourism

Somehow this one went under my radar last week, but I couldn’t let it slip by: WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The state of Alaska has sued the U.S. government, arguing that listing polar bears as a threatened species will hurt Alaskan oil and gas exploration, fisheries and tourism. The lawsuit, filed on Monday in federal court […]

Eighth warmest June on record means ‘Great Ice Age of 2008’ is still over

I know we're supposed to be going into a period of cooling, at least according to people who don't believe in the scientific method, but for those who do, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center reports in its "Climate of 2008 June in Historical Perspective":

Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the eighth warmest on record for June and the ninth warmest for January-June year-to-date period.

It is pretty darn hot in Greenland and Siberia, not like there's anything important in those regions:

What drove the dramatic retreat of arctic sea ice during summer 2007?

Funny you should ask. That is the title of an analysis published this month in Geophysical Research Letters ($ub. req'd) by four scientists from the Polar Science Center, Applied Physics Laboratory, College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle. What did they conclude?