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Where did you get that from? This must be relying on picking very specific parts of the Arctic. This year has not been unusual for the Arctic, in fact, it was c
by mike_hearn 22d ago
Where did you get that from? This must be relying on picking very specific parts of the Arctic. This year has not been unusual for the Arctic, in fact, it was colder than the normally cited average (1958-2002). Take a look, see for yourself:
https://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php https://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
It didn't go above freezing this year, which is unusual (actually I think it may be the first time on record!)
Sea ice extent is a fair bit above the record low in 2012, where "record" here means arbitrarily starting in 1981, although sea ice extents have been observed much further back.
https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-inter...
Greenland mass balance was entirely average and is currently at the top end of the known observations, it seems:
https://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/ https://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/
- willchis 22d agoGo to your first link, click on 2025 and look at the winter values (Nov/Dec).
- willchis 22d agoAlso just look at the first months of 2026 in the link you shared - the average temperatures are up to 15C higher in March!
- mike_hearn 22d agoBut they were almost exactly average in February. You're reading far too much into noise. The idea of a climate crisis is built on arguments about trends that span hundreds of years, not two weeks.
- willchis 22d ago"They were nearly the same average for exactly one day in February" says the guy lecturing me on reading noise.
- mike_hearn 22d agoI think there's some sort of communication gap here. My point is that neither fact tells you anything much, especially not about "how screwed" we are. It's not a battle of data points.
- willchis 22d agoDefinitely a comms gap. I'm not going to sit and list all the evidence for the climate crisis we're currently experiencing in an offhand HN comment. I'm going to say something like "this winter we saw crazy high anomalies" to express how screwed we are.
- mike_hearn 22d agoOK, I see where you are getting it from now. It's quite misleading to take a two week period and describe it as "last winter". No wonder people give blank looks, it was a transient spike that means nothing. The idea everyone should feel sad is based on arguments about long term averages.
- notpachet 22d agoNot the parent, but pointing out a couple of problems in your analysis: First, arctic temperatures: this is a widely misunderstood point. Notice that in the graph, the non-summer months are noticeably warmer. The summer months are going to be effectively capped at around 0 degrees until all the ice is gone, so holding up this graph and saying "look, the temperature never got above freezing!" is misleading, because the "warming" is actually happening as a function of melting ice, not air temperature. Sea ice extent: the last 18 years were the lowest 18 minimums on record. Also, ice extent != ice volume. March 2026 recorded a record-low ice volume. An extent chart reads the same regardless of whether the underlying ice is thin or thick. Greenland mass balance: here you're just plain wrong. You linked to the surface mass balance page, in other words, snowfall minus surface melt + runoff. This does not account for glacial calving and basal melt. The page you linked says this directly. Total mass balance is a grimmer picture: an average loss of about 252 km³ of water per year over 2003-2025, contributing 0.69 mm/yr to sea level rise.
- willchis 22d agoHow is this for a long term trend? Using your own sources: https://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n_anomaly.php https://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n_anomaly.php