Look at this dip during the last week !
Source : ClimateReanalyser.org and NSIDC
Could it be an anomaly with satellite imaging, a random statistical blip, or is something huge just about to start ?
Look at this dip during the last week !
Source : ClimateReanalyser.org and NSIDC
Could it be an anomaly with satellite imaging, a random statistical blip, or is something huge just about to start ?
No. This is a sharper momentary dip. Sort of expected with climate change.
If you look at the summer months for 2025, (January and February for the southern hemisphere) you can see ice sheet area declined far more rapidly rapidly than 2026 did.
Rates of change, particularly ones that are of more recent data, can be very misleading. Now if the same rate of change continued through the end of August, then it would definitely be anomalous.
Climate change does not make immediate impacts like this. Climate change makes the trend of the WHOLE line lower, and more volatile. Notice that 2025 and 2026 lines are at the lower end of the graph.
One (ugly) way to understand this chart better would be the area under the curve for a given year. As 2026 isnt over yet, you cant do this reliably beyond the most recent data point.
The “big” thing then would be if the result for each year was successively lower.
graph is from https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph
that grey area shows 10%-90% range. The big thing is that since 2022, ice extents have deviated strongly from that ultra narrow band. Previously year to year and successive moves, were fairly random above/below that range.
Yep. I didn’t mean to imply something wasn’t happening, but that something isn’t what OP pointed at, and that something is evidence of climate change.
People need to learn that its a slow decline. It’s disastrous, but it looks like worsening wildfires each year. More tornados in Iowa and Minnesota. Lower crop yields. Beaches getting smaller by inches, ocean front property values declining and insurance rates increasing. More intense variations in weather and more difficultly forecasting.
But there are also discussions and predictions about numerous potential tipping points and positive feedback loops.
Even those don’t mean it’s straight for rock bottom.
A tipping point means a point of no return. It will never improve beyond that point. Extent of ice won’t show you that. Otherwise when the extent is at its lowest in March, it would never come back.
I know all that, but we also had two years well above the other ones regarding sea surface temperature : 2023 and 2024. Now we seem to be heading for the strongest El Nino ever recorded, even by a wide margin. So I’m now expecting the unexpected. Let’s hope you’re right.
There’s nothing unexpected here so far. You’re causing yourself unnecessary anxiety 🙃.
With trend data or data over time, if you look at a small period of time, the only knowledge you get is limited to that period of time.
If we look at that small period of time where it behaves differently, we can say an event, independent of other events, caused the change. If we look at historical data, we can likely see that similar events caused similar changes. If we then take the data of the event itself, say the average temperature of the El Niño, and compare it to historical El Niños, we will likely see it is a worse El Niño, and maybe see that they have been worsening over time as well. That becomes evidence of climate change too.