From Science Matters

 By Ron Clutz

For ice extent in the Arctic, the bar is set at 15M km2. The average in the last 12 years occurs on day 62 at 15.07M before descending. Most years are able to clear 15M, but in the five previous years only 2014 and 2016 ice extents cleared the bar at 15M km2; the others came up short. Now on February 11, 2024 (day 42) Arctic ice extent has already leaped over that bar 20 days early.

The graph shows how rapidly the Arctic froze this year, reaching 14.4M km2 extent already on January 24.  Then the extent waffled around that level, until suddenly a Hockey Stick shape appeared when 600k km2 of ice was added in just the last four days. That is 400k km2 above average, and well above many other years, including 2006.  SII is also lagging at 400k km2 lower.

The table shows the distribution of ice compared to day 45 averages and other years on that day.

Region	2024042	Day 45 Ave.	2024-Ave.	2006045	2024-2006
(0) Northern_Hemisphere	15040629	14687838	352791	14419407	621223
(1) Beaufort_Sea	1070983	1070317	667	1069711	1273
(2) Chukchi_Sea	966006	965761	245	966006	0
(3) East_Siberian_Sea	1087137	1087131	6	1087103	35
(4) Laptev_Sea	897845	897837	8	897773	71
(5) Kara_Sea	934647	908486	26161	932726	1920
(6) Barents_Sea	662793	582078	80715	530801	131992
(7) Greenland_Sea	825638	622774	202864	579677	245961
(8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence	1340370	1456370	-115999	1227497	112873
(9) Canadian_Archipelago	854860	853383	1478	852715	2145
(10) Hudson_Bay	1260903	1260579	325	1257433	3470
(11) Central_Arctic	3233243	3208074	25168	3198987	34255
(12) Bering_Sea	631508	700745	-69237	889518	-258010
(13) Baltic_Sea	136308	90991	45317	79904	56404
(14) Sea_of_Okhotsk	1101713	923694	178019	759197	342516

The Pacific basins show a moderate deficit in Bering Sea offset by a large 178k km2 surplus in Okhotsk.  Baffin Bay is down 120k km2, offset by Greenland Sea over 200k km2 and Barents up 81k km2.

These results fly in the face of those claiming for years that Arctic ice is in a “death spiral.”  More sober and clear-eyed observers have called out the alarmists for their exaggerations.  A recent example comes from Allan Alsup Jensen at Nordic Institute of Product Sustainability, Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology, Denmark.  His December 2023 paper is Time Trend of the Arctic Sea Ice Extent.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Since 2007 no significant decline has been observed

Abstract

The NSIDC website, IPCC’s reports and some scientific papers have announced that the Arctic
Sea ice extent, when it is lowest in September month, in recent years has declined dramatically,
and in few decades the sea ice is supposed to disappear completely in the summer. In that way
new and shorter ships routes will open up north of the continents.

The facts are, that the Arctic Sea ice extent measured by satellites since 1978 expresses annual
variations and it has declined considerably from 1997 to 2007. However, before that time period,
from 1978 to 1996, the downward trend was minimal, and in the last 17 years from 2007 to 2023
the downward trend has also been about zero. Therefore, there is no indication that we should
expect the Arctic Sea summer ice to disappear completely, as predicted, in one or two decades.

Regarding the extent of the summer (February) sea ice at the Antarctic, the downward trend during the years 1979-2021 was very small but in 2022 and 2023 a considerable decline was observed, and a decline was also clearly observed for the whole period of 2007- 2023. That was in contradiction to what happened in the Arctic. The pattern of the annual levels was not the same for the Arctic and Antarctic, indicating different drivers in the North and the South.

These data show that there is no apparent correlation between the variable extent of the Arctic
and the Antarctic Sea ice and the gradually increasing CO2-concentrations in the atmosphere as
proposed by NSIDC, IPCC and others, also for these areas of cold climate.