Time for another month-end update and again 2025 has led us in a merry dance with a somewhat disappointing ending. Not seriously so, but we might have expected better.
Below is a chart of NSIDC data plucked from the Charctic Interactive Sea Ice Graph, showing just this part of the current year (blue) plus last year (green) and the lowest ever track, until now, of 2016 (orange) from the previous decade. That low record just marginally now breached by 2025. It doesn’t look as bad when we add in the other three years of the current decade in the adjacent chart and it must be realised that across the whole year (as seen in the spreadsheet further below) there have so far been six month-ends with a positive value for sea ice extent over that of the previous decade, and only five negative values. I have to admit that the end of the year result for December may also be negative – unless the current gap is made up over that month. We need one more surprise from 2025.
Just for the record, the average annual ice build for November is usually 2.5 million Km2. This year only managed to lay down around 1.75 million Km2 of fresh sea ice. That’s around three quarters of a million Km2 shortfall from average, which needs to be made up over December or before mid-March next year at least. Something strange must be happening with the weather up there just now but I’m sure this will pass and there is maybe a hope this has begun with the uptick on the final day of November.
And here is my updated spreadsheet, also based on the NSIDC data….
Overall, and I think this needs to be stated, this decade is turning out quite well for the general philosophy that the devastating loss of Arctic ice over previous decades has been stopped from expanding over this decade.
If the reasons for that turn of events are the expectation that the current temporary warm period (5-6 degrees Celsius* of GMST) of the past 17,000 years, is now coming to its logical and well precedented end, followed by a resumption of the current and still in force long-term glacial era (which still has potentially millions of years to go), and which will return the 5-6 degree rise back to its long-term average of ~10 degrees Celsius GMST over a future period of ~100,000 years, then this in my view is exactly what we should see as a first step in that direction.
We will not know, of course, the full story of the current decade for another five years, but at that time we should see the decade average line for 2021-2030 (not plotted until early 2031) weaving around that of the decade 2011-2020. And half way through the decade that is exactly what we see occurring – with half the months riding above and half below that average line. This is very hopeful for the long-term view – and a death knell for modern climate alarmist theory.
*All but ~1 degree of which occurred long before human industrial civilisation arrived.
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