THere are two days to go to complete my next monthly Arctic Sea Ice update, and I will have some more to say, for which I did not have time last month end.
Two days, because this is not a leap year and there needs to be a comparison, over the years and decades, with the same annual day-of-the-year for each month end. So, with 2024 (and the two prior decade averages we look at) ending October on Day 305, we need to wait for Day 305 data to arrive for the current year (and take that day’s data for all the previous non-leap years of the current decade) in order to compare day for day accurately. That data does not arrive (as it did not arrive for previous years) at my computing devices, in Australia, until overnight on the second day of the new month. In this case November 2, 2025. Ridiculously complex, I agree, but hey, that’s the way the planet spins and the agencies which calculate the data, work. We all have to sleep, but not all at the same time.
Anyway, just a quick preview. This image, based on the NSIDC Interactive Arctic Sea Ice Graph, shows what data we have right now, up to Oct 30, Day 303, as at almost my bedtime on Oct 31, 2025…
The good news I can give right now, is that there is slightly more sea ice regrowth this year than the four decade low point at the same time last year. The year is still below the average for the previous decade (the smoky blue line) and if it finishes at a higher point (entirely feasible) than last year, in two days time, the average for the current half decade will be higher than that of the previous decade. And that has been the case for most of this year – in spite of the weak start.
That puts the current decade in alignment with my theory that the previous spreading of sea ice loss – especially over the previous two decades has been entirely halted in this current one. That is entirely in agreement with the perhaps always predictable expectation that the current inter-glacial period is ending, as the previous two major inter-glacials (Eemian and Holsteinian) did in what is geologically recent history, in approximately similar durations and at even higher temperature extremes than the current one. That would be something to at least begin to experience, wouldn’t it? And as I always say, it takes many generations, often many millennia, for these changes to work their way through. But they all have to begin somewhere, at some point in time. Why not now? These are just preliminary signs we may be witnessing. Isn’t that something special.
Our species arrived on the global scene, in its fullness, perhaps quite fortuitously at the very beginning of this unusual and fairly turbulent period of Earth’s history. We may just be the ‘lucky’ generation to mark the beginning of its ending. That makes our time here something quite special, I reckon. And what are we doing with the opportunity it appears we have been given? Trying to destroy everything we have by foolish and thoughtless actions, it seems. Is that how we want to be remembered?
Not Something Else 
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