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Antarctic Sea Ice Trends in a Supposedly Global Warming World

Paper Reviewed
Simmonds, I. 2015. Comparing and contrasting the behavior of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice over the 35 year period 1979-2013. Annals of Glaciology 56: 18-28.

In an enlightening study, Simmonds (2015) examined the evolution of the sea-ice extent (SIE) over each of Earth's polar regions for the 35-year period stretching from November of 1978 to December of 2013. This he did using sea-ice data that had been remotely acquired from a succession of satellite passive-microwave measurements that provided an almost seamless global time series of coverage, which he had downloaded from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

These data revealed, in the words of the Australian scientist, that the Antarctic shows positive SIE trends in all seasons of the year, resulting in a mean positive annual trend of (15.29 ± 3.85) x 103 km2 per year. And he notes, in this regard, that "the positive Antarctic ice trends can no longer be considered 'small'," as many climate alarmists would likely contend; for he further reports that this trend "is almost one-third of the magnitude of the Northern Hemisphere annual mean decrease."

Last of all, Simmonds additionally states -- which at this stage of the global warming controversy should come as no surprise -- that "the SIE trends in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Phase 5 (CMIP5) simulations differ from the observed Antarctic increases," while further noting that the reasons for the differences "have to be found within the physics of the models," which obviously has yet to be done correctly.

Posted 10 March 2016