Arctic Ice Coverage Is Up Substantially – So Media Ignores It

Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced last Wednesday that the Arctic ice sheet extends 25 percent further than it did last summer, with 1.82 million square miles of ice at its annual low.

Arctic ice coverage reaches its lowest extent in mid- to late-September following the melting season.

This year’s post-melting season ice sheet is 40 percent larger than the record low, which was set in 2012.

The reaction of the media to this good news? Absolute silence.

Alarmist scientists maintain that the northerly polar ice cap continues on a downward melting trend. Upon news of the greater ice coverage, scientists noted that weather patterns fluctuate and pointed to a zone of colder-than-usual air pressure over the Beaufort Sea.

The extent is higher than in recent years, but that is not telling the full story,” explained Mark Serreze, executive director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. He added that this year is a “reprieve” and that “the weather is so variable.

Scientists have tracked ice coverage in the Arctic since 1979. The past 15 years have shown a lower extent of Arctic ice coverage compared to the previous 27 years.

The decreasing trend in the north pole’s ice cap has been one of the biggest headline generators in climate change news coverage.

On the same day last year, that the New York Times reported the annual low range of the Arctic ice cap in the print edition, the top story in the print edition read: “A Climate Crossroads With 2 Paths: Merely Bad or Truly Horrific.

Every year in March and September, the Arctic ice’s annual highs and lows generate grave warnings and calls to action across media outlets (sometimes accompanied by pictures of sad polar bears on precarious floating ice).

The March 2017 news of the Arctic ice sheet’s greatest extent garnered this headline in the Washington Post: “The Arctic just set a grim new record for low levels of sea ice.

In March of 2018, MSNBC published an article on the semi-annual update titled: “How vanishing Arctic ice may set stage for extreme Nor’easters.

For 2020’s second update, Vox published this headline: “Why the record low Arctic sea ice this October is so alarming.

The Antarctic ice sheet does not generate the same headlines. Notably, the Antarctic ice sheet does not have a shrinking trend, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2021 report.

NASA published a study in 2015 that showed that the Antarctic ice sheet had gained billions of tons of ice each year for decades. That included a net gain of 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.

The NASA study contradicted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2013 report, which stated: “Over the last two decades, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been losing mass, glaciers have continued to shrink almost worldwide, and Arctic sea ice and Northern Hemisphere spring snow cover have continued to decrease in extent (high confidence).

Following the NASA study and further research, the IPCC reversed its position on Antarctic ice coverage.

So much for their ‘high confidence’ then.

The Antarctic ice sheet is much larger than the Arctic ice sheet. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the Antarctic ice sheet is roughly the size of the contiguous United States and Mexico combined (5.4 million square miles) while the Arctic ice sheet is three times the size of Texas (656,000 square miles).

While the Antarctic Ice Sheet’s greater size means it is more impactful on the climate, the media focus has remained on the downward-trending Arctic.

Though the National Snow and Ice Data Center, which is often the source for the media buzz over the shrinking Arctic, bills itself as a center on polar research and as “advancing knowledge of Earth’s frozen regions,” its website emphasizes one pole over the other.

Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis” features prominently on the site, while there is no equivalent page for the Antarctic. The page “Greenland Ice Sheet Today” also features prominently. The organization’s “NSIDC in the News” page links to many more stories on the Arctic than the Antarctic.

In July 2021, Antarctic sea ice covered 6.32 million square miles, which was 160,000 square miles above average in the 43-year record of the ice sheet, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This year’s news that Arctic sea ice coverage is up over last year garnered far fewer headlines than last year’s news that ice coverage had decreased year-over-year.

In September 2020, Reuters reacted to the ice coverage decrease with this headline: “Sea of Slush: Arctic sea ice lows mark a new polar climate regime.

It has yet to publish anything about this year’s larger ice sheet.

See more here: climatechangedispatch.com

Header image: The Guardian

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Comments (8)

  • Avatar

    Alan

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    It is interesting that the National Snow and Ice Data Center reports this in a different way saying that it is the 12th lowest on record, and that this is a preliminary announcement and the ice extent could be reduced.

    They are doing all they can to play down the increase from the lowest point and are obviously hoping for a reduction. Is panic setting in?

    Reply

  • Avatar

    Bill

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    The climate stasi has done a good enough job that your average TV consuming pleb thinks anything weather related is concrete proof of climate change. It snows, climate change, hot summer in Texas, climate change… etc… etc…

    I have a neighbor in his early 60s convinced it was colder in winter when he was a child- this proves man made climate change is real, he of course never bothered to look up the solar activity (or neutron count) charts for that time- why would he? Just trust the talking heads on TV! People are just stupid, it’s sad really.

    Reply

    • Avatar

      Jerry Krause

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      Hi Bill and other PSI Readers,

      Over the past several years I have written essays and comments specifically about the data being measured and reported by the world-wide atmospheric sounding project and by various environmental research projects funded by the USA government. I cannot remember any Bill or many other PSI readers specially commenting about this fundamental data which I bring to your attentions.

      If you ignore this actually measured and reported data, I consider you are also quite STUPID and it gets quite discouraging.

      “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgement on some else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgement do the same things.” (Romans 2:1 NIV)

      Have a good day, Jerry

      Reply

      • Avatar

        Carbon Bigfoot

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        Jerry I always read your offerings and when time permits investigate the sources you sight. A corollary to Romans 2:1 was Shakespeare or was it Bacon……”what gift to gee yah…to see your selves as others see yah” ..”or the fault we see in others is often our own reflection.”

        Reply

  • Avatar

    Rick

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    Doesn’t anyone get the real intention behind all of this nonsense?
    “Climate change” is a coined term to enable governments to charge eye watering guilt taxes on its wealthiest citizens to fund their leftist agendas.

    Reply

    • Avatar

      Jerry Krause

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      Hi Rick,

      If you would study the a actual history of the SCIENCE which followed Copernicus’s study of THE KNOWN astronomical observations at his time and then Galileo’s writings. You will find there were many authorities like you who believed the validity of what they and you merely THINK!!!

      I have stated (written) often that that when I accidentally state “I think”; it is CODE for I don’t know. For I only claim to know what as been observed and/or measured reproducibly. And there are even those who question that I even can know this much. They seem to prefer there is nothing that can be observed and/or measured with varying degrees of precision. Hence, these people prefer to only play the intellectual game (DEBATE) where IT IS ACCEPTED THERE ARE NO RIGHT ANSWERS UNLESS THE TOPIC IS MATHEMATICAL

      Except Richard Feynman played a game with a young person which proved there was no INFINITY because there was always a number twice as big or even ZERO because there is always a number HALF as BIG.

      A fact is I admit that while I can use mathematics as a tool; I really do not understand even calculus as I know it can be understood.

      And I assure you DEBATE was not only invented by governmental AUTHORITIES.

      Have a good day, Jerry

      Reply

      • Avatar

        MattH

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        Hi Jerry.

        One has to think or believe to hatch a hypothesis. Maybe it is to ponder. Some may suggest one has to observe something to then develop an explanation.

        jerry . I still have not read a credible explanation on the mechanics or physics of the “heat dome” over your place this summer. Your thoughts, beliefs, or ponderings are welcome.

        I did not study the global weather map leading up to the event but some of the observations once the heat dome established are as follows.

        A big stable high pressure system was over the ocean west of your ponderosa pine. There was a very shallow depression over your area. Almost not a depression at all.
        There was also a slow moving stable air stream carrying warm\hot air to the shallow depression over your area from the Venezuela, Caribbean area. This Venezuelan sourced warm/hot air would ordinarily have warmed North West USA but not cause a heat dome.

        So I ponder that the heat dome over the shallow depression was caused by the depression attempting to draw air down vertically from above to fill the lower pressure area. This had the effect of inhibiting vertical convection and releasing hot air up into the cold upper atmosphere.

        The air masses surrounding the shallow depression was so stable that it was not feeding air into the shallow depression and so the air above the depression was drawn down to fill the low pressure but it reached an equilibrium where the air neither transported vertically nor travelled downwards to fill the low pressure but instead stayed static, creating a heat dome. To repeat, no temperature release from convection from vertical hot air transport.

        These are my thoughts, beliefs and ponderings. Any body able to set me straight or voice concurrence would be welcome.

        Have a nice day. Matt

        Reply

    • Avatar

      Jerry Krause

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      Hi MattH,

      I believe you need to go back to 2020 or beyond to identify what dried everything out. For it had to have taken month to evaporate the reservoir to its low level. I agree that a somewhat stationary High Pressure area was involved, but it had to have over the land of the Pacific Northwest with its very dry and hot subsiding atmosphere being heated by adiabatic warming which created the extreme temperatures of a relativity short period. If this were over the ocean the ;loweratmosphere would have become ‘wet’ before coming over land.

      Have to go now but I will get back some time.

      Have a good day, Jerry

      Reply

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