Alarmists Use Bering Sea Ice Levels To Whip Up Warming Fears

Written by Ron Clutz on March 14, 2018. Posted in Current News

Click to see animation

The alarms are sounding about lack of ice extent in the Bering Sea, studiously ignoring what else is happening in the Arctic.

For instance, the above image shows the last 10 days on the European side, with the Barents Sea on the right growing steadily to a new maximum. On the left, Gulf of St. Lawrence ice is retreating as usual while the Baffin Bay holds steady.

The Barents recovery is interesting and bears watching.  See how 2018 compares with other years in the Graph below.

Note the recent 2018 dramatic rise above average.  Meanwhile, on the Pacific side the seesaw between Bering and Okhotsk continues:

In the last ten days, Bering has gone up, then down, and back up to arrive at the same extent.  In the same period, Okhotsk added 70k km2.

Ice extents for February and March appear in the graph below; 11-year average is 2007 to 2017 inclusive.

Note that ice growth slows down in February and March since the Arctic core is frozen and extent can only be added at the margins.

MASIE shows 2018 is now matching 2017, while SII is running about 200k km2 lower.  The 11-year average maxed on day 62 at 15.1M km2 while this year’s max was on day 69, ~560k km2 lower.

It remains to be seen what max will end up in 2018.

It is natural for alarmists to focus on the Bering Sea since that is the only place where a sizable deficit appears (for the moment).

The graph below shows NH ice extent from day 1, with and without B and O (Bering and Okhotsk, the Pacific basins that will melt out by September anyway.)

Read more at Science Matters

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