Anomaly of Arctic Sea Ice Extent now the largest ever, for any date

[muriel_volestrangler]

The National Snow and Ice Data Center publishes a graph of daily Arctic sea ice extent, often cited.

https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/

Since Oct 13, as OnlinePoker noted here: https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127140846 , it's been the lowest for the day of the year. But, more than that, since Oct 16th, it has each day broken the record for the largest anomaly (ie difference from the 1981-2010 average for a day of the year) that had been set on any day.

The data can be downloaded from here: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/seaice_analysis/Sea_Ice_Index_Daily_Extent_G02135_v3.0.xlsx (the 3rd sheet, "NH-5-Day-Anomaly" is the anomaly for what's on the chart).

The previous largest anomaly had been 3,048,000 km2 below the average, set on Oct 9, 2012. On Oct 16 this year, it was 3,084,000 km2; by Oct 20, 3,271,000 km2.

[hatrack]

1. And it's doing this a month after the autumnal equinox . . . .

Interesting times.