According to climate models, greenhouse gases warm the Arctic region faster than the rest of the world, although there is some discrepancy between their predictions and actual measurements. Therefore, it has been more than interesting to follow the development of the northern sea ice over the years.
The National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) publishes two statistics on its development: the extent of the ice and its area. Of these, daily data is available for the extent, but only monthly averages for the area.
Now that India has suffered from an unprecedented heatwave and southern Europe has also been reported as one of the areas experiencing the most exceptional temperatures, it has been interesting to note that the latest data on the extent of the northern ice shows it is the 37th largest, or 10th smallest, for this time of year in the measurement history starting from 1979.
The monthly area statistic of the northern polar ice surprises even more, as in May, the ice area was the 23rd largest, or 24th smallest, in the statistics, thus roughly at the median value of the statistics. Therefore, the area of Arctic sea ice does not support the idea that the climate is warming fastest in the Arctic region. And even the estimate based on ice extent supports that only weakly.
All this raises questions about the ability of climate models to predict the distribution of warming caused by greenhouse gases across different parts of the globe. Or alternatively, about the reliability of climate statistics: in this regard, the measurements of the Arctic ice cover, carried out with easily interpretable methods, are surely among the most reliable, even though the two different measurement methods of the NSIDC produce surprisingly divergent views of the size of the northern polar ice cover.
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