I think I must have commented on the situation in the Arctic more this year than ever before. It has been and continues to be a most surprising and interesting year. Though it is the long-term cooling trend which persists.
In my previous report, some two weeks back, following the turning point of summer melting, I suggested that, by now, the Arctic sea ice would have grown to be some 6.5 million Km2. It is nowhere near that figure and has taken off in a most unexpected direction. See image below…
There is nothing to fear here. It is not an unprecedented occurrence. In fact, though there are only two other years where the ice growth has tracked further outside the curve of 2024 – the ice building slower than this year, up to this point – those years were the very recent 2019 and 2020, as shown added to the first image in the image below (ice-blue and purple lines).
The fact that data for both outsider years their data is included in the decadal average for 2011-2020 – which I am still including in these comparative charts for reference (the smoky-blue line), indicates that such extreme elements do not have much effect on the average position over a decade.
Not indicated here but you can check for yourself, those two years ended in similar ice-forming position as all other recent years – as I am sure will 2024. If it doesn’t, then that might be indicative of a totally different scenario for the Arctic than I have been predicting this year, since that is highly predicated on a now continually rising amount of ice formation cover for that ocean. Which will eventually, but probably not in our lifetimes, meet with and join an expanding permanent land-based ice-mass covering around half the land-mass of surrounding Northern continents in all directions.
I firmly believe there is little hope or prospect that the leaky tub of a current fictitious global warming event so favoured by those with $-signs in their eyes, holding water for very much longer. The ‘real’ science shows just the opposite.
Not that that precludes the occasional ‘wayward’ year from causing a few hairy moments as they pass, and as I predicted when I began this track of thought. 2024 may be one such year. But as with the infamous 2012, it is unlikely to form even a slight blip on the long-term record.
And ‘hey!’, I’m exaggerating the situation quite a bit, for effect here. On the whole, 2024 has been a ‘playful’ but not a damaging year so far, as climate watching goes.
Not Something Else 
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