Simultaneous All-Time Record Winter Arctic Sea Ice Low, All-Time Record Summer Antarctic Sea Ice Low

[hatrack]

Here's another entry in the parade of sobering climate change records: The National Snow and Ice Data Center announced Wednesday that Arctic sea ice hit its maximum extent for the year on March 7, and it was the lowest in the 38 years of satellite records.

The total ice coverage as the winter drew to a close was 471,000 square miles less than the 1981-2010 average—meaning ice larger than the combined size of California, Oregon, Washington and Nevada failed to form this year.

"We have had three record-setting low years of maximum sea ice extent in a row," said Walter Meier, a research scientist specializing in sea ice at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

After decades of expansion, the sea ice surrounding Antarctica, where the summer is just ending, also hit a record low, NSIDC reported. Its minimum extent for year was reached on March 3, and was roughly 900,000 square miles below the 1981-2010 late-summer average.

EDIT

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22032017/arctic-sea-ice-climate-change-global-warming

[longship]

1. Those Chinese must have awesome climate technology to make this happen!

After all, I heard that this climate change hypothesis was all a Chinese conspiracy. The new president told me so.

I think we need to spy on these Chinese climate experts who can apparently melt ice with their minds, or something like that.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Arctic ice falls to record winter low after polar 'heatwaves'

Extent of ice over North pole has fallen to a new wintertime low, for the third year in a row, as climate change drives freakish weather

Damian Carrington
@dpcarrington
Wednesday 22 March 2017 14.00 EDT


The extent of Arctic ice has fallen to a new wintertime low, as climate change drives freakishly high temperatures in the polar regions.

The ice cap grows during the winter months and usually reaches its maximum in early March. But the 2017 maximum was 14.4m sq km, lower than any year in the 38-year satellite record, according to researchers at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) and Nasa.

“I have been looking at Arctic weather patterns for 35 years and have never seen anything close to what we’ve experienced these past two winters,” said NSIDC’s director, Mark Serreze. 2017 is the third year in a row the Arctic’s winter ice has set a new low.

The new record comes a day after the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation warned that the record-breaking heat that made 2016 the hottest year ever recorded has continued into 2017, pushing the world into “truly uncharted territory”.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/22/arctic-ice-falls-record-winter-low-polar-heatwaves