According to a recent survey, as many as 70 percent of Finnish schoolchildren suffer from mental health issues. A significant cause of this is the news coverage related to climate change and the environment, which has driven even the most gifted young people into deep anxiety.
For this reason, I once again decided to analyze the melting of Arctic sea ice, which has been claimed to result in ice-free waters by the 2030s. Based on the statistics, I created the following image using data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center's dataset "All daily (single day and five-day trailing average) extent values in one file, updated daily," which officially begins in 1987 (prior to this, the dataset only contains data for every second day).
From this dataset, I extracted the minimum extent of Arctic ice for each year and plotted the following image, which shows the annual minimum extent of Arctic ice, its five-year moving average, and a linear trendline generated by Excel, which I manually extended across the entire chart.
From the red five-year moving average, it can be seen that the ice melt can be divided into three phases. From the start of the dataset until the mid-1990s, it was slow, but then accelerated for over a decade, reaching its minimum in 2013. After that, the melting slowed down again.
The black regression curve drawn on the chart for the entire dataset, however, shows that if the trend were to continue as it has in the recorded data, the Arctic sea ice would likely not be ice-free even by 2050. Therefore, the melting predicted by climate scientists for the 2030s must be based on other factors.
To understand this, I drew another image, in which I manually fitted a straight line that follows only the rapid melting phase in the middle of the dataset, aligning with the red five-year moving average. This appears as a green line in the image below.
As my esteemed reader will notice, this line corresponds to the scientific prediction of ice melt in the near future. Thus, it seems that the forecast in question—despite being mathematically and scientifically complex—is ultimately based on a development that would occur if the ice melt follows the trend from the late 1990s to 2013.
But what about the events in Arctic sea ice melting after 2013? To understand this, I performed a similar manual line fitting operation based on the post-2013 data. This is shown as a blue line in the diagram below.
As my esteemed reader will notice, this "data fit" also indicates a downward trend, but a very gradual one. And if this trend prevails in the Arctic, no living person today will witness an ice-free Arctic Ocean. Not even their children.
Therefore, I would hope that media coverage of climate change, and especially the melting of Arctic sea ice, would be less sensationalist and instead highlight the factors that suggest extreme views are unlikely to materialize. These also indicate that the models predicting rapid climate change still involve vast uncertainties, suggesting that humanity most likely has ample time to adapt to the ever-changing environment.
Climate Model Predictions and the Reality of Arctic Sea Ice
Can climate models predict the distribution of warming?
The area of Arctic sea ice was exceptionally large in January
A collapse in North Atlantic ocean currents could occur this century, according to a new study.
ReplyDeleteAs a result, temperatures in Northern Europe may drop to arctic readings.
"Probability Estimates of a 21st Century AMOC Collapse"
https://arxiv.org/html/2406.11738v1
Another opinion in this article
https://yle.fi/a/74-20107311
Yes, I noted the news in August 8th in my Finnish blog (https://professorinajatuksia.blogspot.com/2024/08/pohjois-euroopan-hikinen-ja-kylma.html). Right now, the arctic sea ice statistic doesn't really fit either one of the options "warming" or "collapse".
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