Excellent Saturday Summary.

[rah]

Note: On the graph Joe starts out with a graph which plots the Arctic temperatures from the DMI (Danish Meteorological Institute). The red line is the temperature record for the year and the green line is the mean or average temperature for a given day of the year over the history of the DMI records going back to 1958. The straight blue line is freezing. The temperature scale on the left is given in degrees Kelvin (K). You will notice that currently the temperature is at about 265 K, that is equivalent to between 17 and 18 degrees F. Also notice that at no time have the average temperatures in the Arctic gotten above freezing this year. Yet if you pay attention to this stuff you know there has been a whole lot of hype about how warm the arctic is with claims the arctic ice is "melting". Now there are several factors that can effect the amount of sea ice. SSTs(Sea Surface Temperatures), increased salinity, increased insolation (exposure to sunlight), and winds and waves. SSTs are not nor have been abnormally high nor is salinity (the higher the salinity of the water the colder it has to be for it to freeze. Also more saline water is heavier and tends to sink if there is less saline water layered beneath it.) And insolation? Well the sun rose at 80 deg Latitude on April 12th after the dark summer and currently the sun is at a 18 deg declination or IOW low on the horizon.

The bottom line is that though it has been warmer than normal in the Arctic this year the ice is not "melting" because the temperature of the air. Wind and waves have broken up some of the ice but the wind pattern has changed recently and ice is being concentrated by being pushed up against land masses again.

Anyway stick with it because Joe gets into an excellent talk about climate after a brief portion describing coming conditions for the US.

Saturday Summary 5/14