According to climate models, the world is warming frighteningly fast. And even faster in the Arctic sea ice area, which, according to a fairly recent study, entered a state in 2007 from which its surface area cannot recover through normal climate variability.
Recently, it has also been reported that the temperature of the Earth's oceans during the past El Niño year has been the highest in recorded history. As well as the average global climate temperature.
Based on these premises, one could assume that the current January area of Arctic sea ice would be exceptionally small, and its maximum size this winter would be smaller than ever before in recorded history. Or actually, this assumption could be considered a hypothesis derived from the prevailing climate theory nowadays.
So, I went to check the statistics maintained by the National Snow & Ice Data Center on January sea ice areas. Looking at this data series that started in 1979, I was amazed and decided to list the information it contains in the table below.
From the table, it can be seen that the January sea ice area in the Arctic was the 21st largest in its 46-year (the table only includes 45 years due to missing data for the year 1988) observational history. This is clearly larger than the median value of the dataset. Additionally, we notice that the situation was very similar two years ago in 2022, when the ice extent was even larger than this past January.
Therefore, it is interesting to follow how the northern sea ice will develop by the end of this year's autumn. By then, its area should reach its minimum size and perhaps even melt to a smaller area than in 2012, when it was historically at its lowest.
Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Does Arctic sea ice melt as atmospheric greenhouse gases increase?
Does Arctic sea ice melt as atmospheric greenhouse gases increase?
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