Climate Audit - by Steve McIntyre » Sea Ice - the Stretch Run
The most intense melt occurred last year between day 179 (June 29) and day 184 (July 4) with 160,000 sq km meltback on day 182 (July 2) and over 200,000 sq km on day 183 (July 3). This year’s a leap year, so that July 2 is already day 182 and was only 90,000 sq km. As of yesterday, 2008 was about 510,000 sq km behind 2007 and it looks like it is losing ground day by day in the first week of July - a big melt week where it has to make time.
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2 comments:
so how did the USN and the Royal Navy fake the pictures ?
http://tinyurl.com/5b9kto
Some months ago, I ran across a Japanese Naval History mention which indicated that a Japanese Fleet navigated a virtually ice-free Arctic Ocean in a period corresponding to the Medieval Warm Period. I regret not bookmarking the item at the time - my interest in Naval History seemingly runs independent of my interest in Climate Science, and I probably did not anticipate that the latest AGW panic would center around a complete melting of the Arctic Ice Cap. I vaguely recall the time period was somewhere in the 1200-1400 range.
I posted the comment on RealClimate.org - it was quickly quashed by Gavin Schmidt, who does not allow anything remotely approaching reality to interfere with his personal hysteria. Tom was kind enough to encourage me to re-post the comment here.
As long as Tom is giving me the space, I'll mention the controversial new book by Gavin Menzies (1421: The Year China Discovered the World,) written by a retired British submarine commander. In it he asserts that a Chinese fleet commanded by Admiral Zheng circumnavigated the globe a century before Ferdinand Magellan as part of their exploration of the world. What is interesting in Menzies' work are the maps showing the various paths taken by different elements of the fleet, which includes navigation of open waters across the top of Siberia, Greenland, and even Northern Canada ... a trip that would have taken more than a brief Arctic Summer given the slow pace of square rigged junks of considerable size.
Menzies' book is highly controversial, so it's accuracy is not assured, but it gives additional pause for thought on the whole subject of a relatively ice-free Arctic Ocean during the Medieval Warm Period.
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