So, what is the state of the Northern sea ice now?
Well, there are certainly no surprises, for me at least, everything appears to be going well with more ice remaining, both for the year and for the current decade average at what is now the tail-end of Summer. This is actually surprising really, considering the desultory ice build season during the past Winter. But I am hearing reports of early onset of very cold weather now over much of the Northern Hemisphere.
Let’s talk specifics and, while doing that, I can comment on the predictions I made six weeks ago – which seemed unlikely to materialize given previous conditions. Here is the latest chart from the NSIDC interactive sea ice data…
Only the day after I made the predictions, which was August 6 (it had become Aug 7 by the time I got the thing posted – by my local time – which means the latest available data was Aug 5 at the time of writing), the daily records took an unexpected turn and have remained on an improving path for ice cover since that time. Luckily for me, and for all of us I guess. This has enabled my predictions to be very accurate or in ballpark range. The latest data shows that on September 1 there were 4.827 million Km2 of Arctic sea ice remaining untouched by Summer heat. You will see from the updated spreadsheet below that the half decade average (current decade), at 4.865 million Km2, remains considerably above that of the previous decade. An accurate prediction. The raw value of 4.827 is also within ballpark range of the “around 5 million Km2” which I also predicted would be closer to the 2021/2022 average value than the 2022/2023 result (even though by only a small amount). All in all, this is a great result for sea ice extent and one which may not have been expected given how things stood at the beginning of the year.
My next prediction was that the total loss of sea ice during August would be around 1.4 million Km2 (considerably less than the general average value of ~2 million). It turned out to be 1.539 million. Another accurate forecast and it has to be admitted that a retention of almost half a million Km2 of sea ice extent in close to what is expected to be the hottest part of Summer is not an insignificant result. Though every minor victory needs to be realised for what it represents, we cannot be too exultant about that on just one year’s data. The difference on the current half decade averages reduces that retained amount to less that a quarter million Km2. But it is still far better than what the alarmists would try to tell us is their unbelievable version of the truth.
My final prediction will need to wait until the end of September results are in. I said the result would be ‘touch and go’ due to potential late summers but I want to change that now. I see there being a large positive result for ice retention this year, given what just occurred, late Summer or not.
The main thing is that the planet is likely not to get any warmer, year by year. Even possibly from this decade it will begin to become cooler, with more and more ice gradually accumulating – as I also mentioned yesterday. Fortunately that is not going to effect ourselves very much, but in fact our far future descendants will need to overcome great cold for a long, long time …if humanity survives at all… and it has to begin somewhere. Which is, in fact, the whole point of my recording these details.
I was reminded today of the, I think long forgotten ’60s song, “In The Year 2525 (if man is still alive)…)”. We need to always keep in mind that the race humanity is running, is a potentially open-ended marathon, not a sprint.
Not Something Else 
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