by T. Lison, Nov 24, 2021 in ClimateChangeDispatch

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t’s so cold in the Arctic that:

Two icebreakers are on the way to rescue ice-locked ships on Northern Sea Route (snip)

District authorities in the Russian Far East have decided to commission two icebreakers to aid the vessels currently ice-locked in the East Siberian Sea. (snip)

The commissioning of the powerful icebreaking vessels comes as severe sea-ice conditions have taken shippers by surprise. There are now about 20 vessels that either are stuck or struggling to make it across the icy waters.

But what about the Antarctic ice cap?

That’s not about to melt either:

[T]he South Pole also just witnessed a historically cold winter. As reported last month: “Between the months of April and September, the South Pole averaged a temperature of -61.1C (-78F). Simply put, this was the region’s coldest 6-month spell ever recorded, and it comfortably usurped the previous coldest ‘coreless winter‘ on record: the -60.6C (-77F) from 1976 (solar minimum of weak cycle 20).”

In  fact, it turns out that, according to a study released a week ago:

PALEOCLIMATE DATA INDICATE THERE WAS LESS ARCTIC SEA ICE DURING THE PRE-INDUSTRIAL PERIOD THAN IN MODERN TIMES, OR WHEN CO2 CONCENTRATIONS WERE 100 PPM LOWER THAN TODAY (280 VS. 380 PPM).

Scientists (Diamond et al., 2021) assert that during the 18th and 19th centuries Arctic sea ice extent minimum (September) values averaged 5.54 million km².

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