Archives par mot-clé : Arctic

climate-debate

Deep Purple — future biological darkening of the Greenland Ice Sheet

by GFZ GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, Helmholtz Centre, October 12, 2019  in WUWT

Purple algae are making the western Greenland Ice Sheet melt faster, as the algae darken the ice surface and make it absorb more sunlight.

 

The ERC (European Research Council) has awarded an €11 million Euro Synergy grant called DEEP PURPLE to Liane G. Benning at the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) Potsdam, Germany, Alexandre Anesio at Aarhus University, Denmark and Martyn Tranter at University of Bristol, UK. Their common goal is to examine over the next six years (2020-2026) the role of glacier algae in progressively darkening the Greenland Ice Sheet surface in a warming climate.

The three researchers have already changed our understanding of why the ice darkens during the melt season by identifying the purple-pigmented ice algal blooms in the ice surface. These glacier algae are pigmented deep purple to shield their vital elements from the intense UV radiation in sunlight. During the melt season there are so many of these deep purple algae that they look as black as the soot from tundra fires. They form a dark band that has been progressively growing down the western side of the Greenland Ice Sheet during the summer melt season for the last 20 years, causing increased melting of the darkening ice.

Just why these glacier algae grow so densely is not really known at the moment, and neither is whether they will grow in the new melt zones on the ice sheet surface, to the north and to the ice sheet interior, as the climate continues to warm.

Project DEEP PURPLE

Questions such as this need answering if future sea level rise is to be predicted accurately, since Greenland melt is a major driver of current sea level rise.

Project DEEP PURPLE aims to answer these questions over the next six years, combining curisoity driven science about how the glacier algae grow and interact with their icy habitat, and societally relevant research into the processes that lead to ice surface darkening that are needed by ice melt modellers.

The scientists will work around many different sites in Greenland, making measurements of surface darkening, glacier algae density, how much soot and dust the algae trap on the surface and the physical properties of the melting ice surface to finally understand, how biological darkening occurs, and to predict where and when it will occur in the future.

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climate-debate

2019 Arctic Ice Demise Deferred Again

by Ron Clutz, October 2, 2019 in ScienceMatters

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MASIE daily results for September show 2019 early melting followed by an early stabilizing and refreezing.

Note that 2019 started the month about 800k km2 below the 12 year average (2007 through 2018 inclusive).  There was little additional loss of ice, a rise then a dip below 4 M km2, and a sharp rise ending the month.  Interestingly, 2019 matched the lowest year 2012 at the start, but ended the month well ahead of both 2012 and 2007.

The table for day 273 shows distribution of ice across the regions making up the Arctic ocean.

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climate-debate

New Study: Modern Arctic Sea Ice Cover Is Present MONTHS Longer Than Nearly All Of The Last 8000 Years

by Caron et al., 2019, 30 Sep. 2019 in NoTricksZone

A new reconstruction of Arctic (NW Greenland) sea ice cover (Caron et al., 2019) reveals modern day sea ice is present multiple months longer than almost any time in the last 8000 years…and today’s summer sea surface temperatures s are among the coldest of the Holocene.
Yet another new study (Caron et al., 2019) shows today’s Arctic sea ice cover is still quite extensive when compared to the last several thousand years, when CO2 concentrations ranged between 260 and 270 ppm.

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Other new Arctic sea ice reconstructions from the north of Iceland (Harning et al., 2019) and Barents Sea (Berben et al., 2019) regions indicate a) modern sea ice extent has changed very little in the last several hundred years, or since the Little Ice Age, and b) the Early Holocene had millennial-scale periods of sea-ice-free and open water conditions, which is in stark contrast to “modern conditions” – the “highest value” or furthest extent of the sea ice record.

“[T]he PBIP25 values [proxy for sea ice presence] reach their highest value (0.87) of the record at ca. 0 cal yr BP. An increase in PBIP25 suggests a further extension in sea ice cover, reflecting Arctic Front conditions (Müller et al., 2011), most similar to modern conditions.” (Berben et al., 2019)

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better to know...?, climate-debate

THICK ARCTIC ICE STOPS YET ANOTHER SHIP OF CLIMATE CHANGE DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKERS

by Cap Allon, Sep. 9, 2019 in Electroverse

The MS MALMO is the latest in a long list of ships to have gotten stuck in surprisingly thick Arctic sea ice this year.

The Swedish vessel, built in 1943 and refurbished in 2014, was on an “Arctic tour” with the noble mission of ferrying a team of Climate Change documentary filmmakers to the front line. The teams intention was to capture some of the catastrophic ice melt being reported by the worlds media — ice melt which it would appear still refuses to manifest despite decades of furious willing from the UN & IPCC.

The MS MALMO came to a grinding halt on Sep 3 off Longyearbyen, the Svalbard Archipelago, halfway between Norway and the North Pole, when it encountered impenetrably thick ice:

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climate-debate

Climate Warriors Stuck In Arctic Ice (That All Melted Years Ago!)

by P. Homewood, Sep. 8, 2019 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

Arctic tours ship MS MALMO with 16 passengers on board got stuck in ice on Sep 3 off Longyearbyen, Svalbard Archipelago, halfway between Norway and North Pole. The ship is on Arctic tour with Climate Change documentary film team, and tourists, concerned with Climate Change and melting Arctic ice. All 16 Climate Change warriors were evacuated by helicopter in challenging conditions, all are safe. 7 crew remains on board, waiting for Coast Guard ship assistance.
Something is very wrong with Arctic ice, instead of melting as ordered by UN/IPCC, it captured the ship with Climate Change Warriors.

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climate and geology

Ten years of icy data show the flow of heat from the Arctic seafloor

by US Geological Survey, August 8, 2019 in ScienceDaily

Scientists have taken the temperature of a huge expanse of seafloor in the Arctic Ocean in new research by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Geological Survey of Canada. The study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, is accompanied by the release of a large marine heat flow dataset collected by the USGS from an ice island drifting in the Arctic Ocean between 1963 and 1973. These never-before-published data greatly expand the number of marine heat flow measurements in the high Arctic Ocean.

Marine heat flow data use temperatures in near-seafloor sediments as an indication of how hot Earth’s outer layer is. These data can be used to test plate tectonic theories, provide information on oil and gas reservoirs, determine the structure of rock layers and infer fluid circulation patterns through fractures in those rock layers.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Greenland’s ‘Record Temperature’ denied – the data was wrong

by Anthony Watts, August 12, 2019 in WUWT

From the “But, but, wait! Our algorithms can adjust for that!” department comes this tale of alarmist woe. Greenland’s all-time record temperature wasn’t a record at all, and it never got above freezing there.

First, the wailing from news media:

NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/climate/european-heatwave-climate-change.html

WAPO: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/06/10/greenland-witnessed-its-highest-june-temperature-ever-recorded-on-thursday/

Climate Progress: https://thinkprogress.org/greenland-hits-record-75-f-sets-melt-record-as-globe-aims-at-hottest-year-e34e534e533e/

Polar Portal: http://polarportal.dk/en/news/news/record-high-temperature-for-june-in-greenland/

Now from the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), via the news website The Local, the cooler reality:

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climate-debate, to keep an eye on...

For Most Of The Last 10,000 Years, Greenland Ice Sheet and Glacier Volume Was Smaller Than Today

by K. Richard, August 5, 2019 in NoTricksZone

A new paper (Axford et al., 2019) reveals NW Greenland’s “outlet glaciers were smaller than today from ~9.4 to 0.2 ka BP” (9,400 to 200 years before 1950), and that “most of the land-based margin reached its maximum Holocene extent in the last millennium and likely the last few hundred years.”

The authors conclude:

“We infer based upon lake sediment organic and biogenic content that in response to declining temperatures, North Ice Cap reached its present-day size ~1850 AD, having been smaller than present through most of the preceding Holocene.”

Furthermore, the authors assert Greenland was 2.5°C to 3°C warmer than modern on average during the Holocene Thermal Maximum, and peak temperatures were 4°C to 7°C warmer.

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Image Source: Mikkelson et al., 2018

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climate-debate

Greenland Ice sheet Meltdown Scare–Except It’s Not True

by P.  Homewood,  August 1, 2019 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

The same heat dome that roasted Europe and broke national temperature records in five countries last week has shifted to Greenland, where it is causing one of the biggest melt events ever observed on the fragile ice sheet.

By some measures, the ice melt is more extreme than during a benchmark record event in July 2012, according to scientists analyzing the latest data. During that event, about 98 percent of the ice sheet experienced some surface melting, speeding up the process of shedding ice into the ocean.

The fate of Greenland’s ice sheet is of critical importance to every coastal resident in the world, since Greenland is already the biggest contributor to modern-day sea level rise. The pace and extent of Greenland ice melt will help determine how high sea levels climb and how quickly….

The Danish Meteorological Institute tweeted that more than half the ice sheet experienced some degree of melting on Tuesday, according to a computer model simulation, which made it the “highest this year by some distance.”

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And there is no mention of the fact that the ice sheet grew substantially last year, and also the year before:

The simple fact is that the Greenland ice sheet melts every summer, particularly when the sun shines. That’s what it does. And it grows back again in winter as the snow falls. Indeed, if it did not melt, it would carry on growing year after year.

Inevitably there are some days when the weather is warmer and sunnier than normal, and others when it is colder. To pick an odd day or two is ridiculous and dishonest scaremongering.

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See also here and here

climate-debate

Fake “Heatwave for Greenland” Claims

by P. Homewood, July 30, 2019 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

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And that Greenland ice? The Surface Mass Balance has been well below normal throughout the winter, because of the dry weather. The rate of summer melt, however, has been pretty much normal, contrary to the fake claims of Ms Nullis.

With only a couple of weeks of melt left, it seems extremely unlikely that, even with the sunshine forecast, that the ice will dip below the 2012 figure (which incidentally is only a “record low” since records began in 1981).

http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/

climate-debate

Shockingly Thick First-Year Ice In Mid-July Between Barents Sea And North Pole

by S.J. Crockford, July29, 2019 in ClimateChangeDispatch

In late June, one of the most powerful icebreakers in the world encountered such extraordinarily thick ice on-route to the North Pole (with a polar bear specialist and deep-pocketed, Attenborough-class tourists onboard) that it took a day and a half longer than expected to get there.

A few weeks later, in mid-July, a Norwegian icebreaker also bound for the North Pole (with scientific researchers onboard) was forced to turn back north of Svalbard when it unexpectedly encountered impenetrable pack ice.

Apparently, the ice charts the Norwegian captain consulted showed ‘first-year ice‘ – ice that formed the previous fall, defined as less than 2 m thick (6.6 ft) – which is often much broken up by early summer.

However, what he and his Russian colleague came up against was consolidated first-year pack ice up to 3 m thick (about 10 ft). Such thick first-year ice was not just unexpected but by definition, should have been impossible.

Ice charts for the last few years that estimate actual ice thickness (rather than age) show ice >2 m thick east and/or just north of Svalbard and around the North Pole are not unusual at this time of year.

This suggests that the propensity of navigational charts to use ice ‘age’ (e.g. first-year vs. multi-year) to describe ice conditions could explain the Norwegian captain getting caught off-guard by exceptionally thick first-year ice.

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climate-debate

2019 Climate “Ship Of Fools” Runs Into 3-Meter Thick Ice… Baffin Inlets Mid Summer Ice Extent No Trend in 50 Years

by P. Gosselin, July 19, 2019 in NoTricksZone

Our German skeptic friend Snowfan here keeps us up to date on the latest ODEN “Ship of Fools” attempt to travel across an Arctic that is supposed to be ice-free by now.

The incentive to cross the Arctic passages in the summer is huge. Doing so would mean at least a week of fame with the media blaring out your name along with grossly hyped headlines of an Arctic ice meltdown due to global warming. One of these years, a ship might get lucky and manage to get through the Northwest Passage.

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Also defying the models is the extent of ice cover for July 9 at the Baffin inlets Regent – Boothia. Over the last 50 years, there’s been little trend change:

 

Source: Canadian Ice Service

climate-debate

10 fallacies about Arctic sea ice & polar bear survival: teachers & parents take note

by S. Crockford, July 15, 2019, in WUWT/PolarBearScience

Summer sea ice loss is finally ramping up: first year is disappearing, as it has done every year since ice came to the Arctic millions of years ago. But critical misconceptions, fallacies, and disinformation abound regarding Arctic sea ice and polar bear survival. Ahead of Arctic Sea Ice Day (15 July), here are 10 fallacies that teachers and parents especially need to know about.

As always, please contact me if you would like to examine any of the references included in this post. These references are what make my efforts different from the activist organization Polar Bears International. PBI virtually never provide references within the content it provides, including material it presents as ‘educational’. Links to previous posts of mine that provide expanded explanations, images, and additional references are provided.

The cartoon above was done by Josh: you can drop off the price of a beer (or more) for his efforts here.

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sciences-general

Super salty, subzero Arctic water provides peek at possible life on other planets

by University of Washington, July 12, 2019 in ScienceDaily

On Earth, scientists are studying the most extreme environments to learn how life might exist under completely different settings, like on other planets. A University of Washington team has been studying the microbes found in “cryopegs,” trapped layers of sediment with water so salty that it remains liquid at below-freezing temperatures, which may be similar to environments on Mars or other planetary bodies farther from the sun.

At the recent AbSciCon meeting in Bellevue, Washington, researchers presented DNA sequencing and related results to show that brine samples from an Alaskan cryopeg isolated for tens of thousands of years contain thriving bacterial communities. The lifeforms are similar to those found in floating sea ice and in saltwater that flows from glaciers, but display some unique patterns.

“We study really old seawater trapped inside of permafrost for up to 50,000 years, to see how those bacterial communities have evolved over time,” said lead author Zachary Cooper, a UW doctoral student in oceanography.

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climate-debate

Polar Bears Are Thriving Despite Global Warming: Here’s Why

by Susan J. Crockford, July 11, 2019 in ClimateChangeDispatch

This essay explains in simple terms why so many people still believe that polar bears are in peril when nothing could be further from the truth; it is an essential lesson that shatters the basis of the shameful indoctrination of young school children and undermines the baseless claims of activist protestors.

It was written and translated into French for a special climate change feature issue (July) of the monthly French magazine Valeurs Actuelles (reviewed here) and reprinted by the French hunting magazine Chasses Internationales.

It has also been translated into German for a dedicated climate change issue (11 July) of the Swiss weekly magazine Die Weltwoche.

I have added a couple of figures to illustrate this English version of the essay.

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climate and geology, climate-debate

Volcanism Altering Bering Sea Eco-Systems, Not Climate Change

by James  E. Kamis, July 8, 2019 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Volcanism, primarily ocean floor in nature, is the most feasible and plausible cause of recent alterations to the Bering Sea physical and biological systems, not climate change.

Since 2014, multiple changes to the Bering Sea’s physical and biological systems such as a rise in seawater temperature, sea ice melting, alteration of commercial fish migration patterns and the very sudden die-off of certain sea bird species have made front-page news.

Many scientists have been quick to attribute these supposedly ‘unnatural’ events to human-induced atmospheric warming or climate change without mentioning or giving due consideration to emissions from active volcanic features that circumvent the entire Bering Sea and populate its seafloor.

This immediate jump to a climate change cause and event effect relationship is especially difficult to understand knowing that frequently during the last five years we have been informed of yet another eruption from a Bering Sea area volcano located in either Russia, Alaska, or on the Bering seafloor.

So, let’s take a moment to review Bering Sea volcanic activity and its likely effect on the area’s physical and biological systems.

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climate-debate

Arctic Sea Ice Surprise Global Warming Experts By Remaining Stable This Decade

by P. Gosselin, June 28, 2019 in NoTricksZone

The Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) expects sea ice extent growth in June 2019:

The DMI plot for the development of Arctic sea ice area (extent) from June 1979 to the PROGNOSE for June, 2019. Since 2010, i.e. 9 years ago, the sea ice areas of the Arctic have been growing in trend. Reports about disappearing sea ice in the Arctic are fake news. See also: No ice melting in the Arctic in this decade. Source: DMI-Plots Ice Cover

May Arctic sea ice trend now stable 15 years

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climate-debate

Ice Melting In Greenland? That’s What It Does In Summer

by P. Homewood, June 20, 2019 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

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The first thing to point out is that this is nothing to do with Greenland’s ice sheet, despite the misleading inference to that effect in the first paragraph. It is in fact fjord ice, which freezes every winter and melts every summer.

This year it is beginning to melt slightly earlier than usual, because of warm air moving up from the south. This is called “weather”, and has nothing to do with “global warming”.

As is noted, such weather is not unprecedented. Indeed, the temperature peak of 17.3C is not even unusual for Qaanaaq, where the record is set at 20C.

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See also here

climate-debate

Polar bear habitat update at mid-June: more than enough for survival

by Polar Bear Science, June 16, 2019

Here we are at the middle of June, when most polar bears are pretty much done with hunting seals for the season. And despite hand-wringing from some quarters, sea ice extent is down only marginally from average at this time of year and certainly not enough to impact polar bear survival.

Given the large expanse of open water in the Southern Beaufort so early in the season, one resident pessimist insists those polar bears are “challenged” by the lack of ice. If he is right, there should be reports of dozens upon dozens of skinny and dying bears along the coast of Alaska this summer. If not, he will pretend he never suggested any such thing.

So far, despite the early loss of ice in some regions, there have been no reports of polar bears ashore unusually early. Hudson Bay still has lots of thick first year ice, so despite the overall reduced Arctic ice coverage, none of the three Hudson Bay polar bear populations are facing the earlier-than-usual sea ice breakup this year as we keep being promised will show up. In fact, there hasn’t been a significantly early breakup in Western Hudson Bay since 2010 (see previous posts here and here).

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better to know...?

Arctic Shipping Climate Change, Commercial Traffic and Port Development

by Taylor & Francis Group, eBook August 20, 2019

This book considers both the present state of Arctic shipping and possible future trends with reference to the various sectors of maritime transportation: cruise tourism, container traffic, and bulk shipping. Ports are analysed as tools that support the strategies of coastal states to foster the development of resource extraction, enhance the attractiveness of Arctic shipping lanes and enable the control of maritime activities through coast guard deployment.

The aim of this book is to draw a picture of the trends of Arctic shipping. How is traffic evolving in Canada’s Arctic, or along the Northern Sea Route? Are there significant differences between bulk and container shipping segments when considering the Arctic market? How are the ports and the hinterland developing and what are the strategies behind those? How is the legal framework shaping the evolution of maritime transportation? The contributors to this book consider all of these questions, and more, as they map out the prospects for Arctic shipping and analyse in detail the development of Arctic shipping as a result of multi-variable interactions.

This book will be key reading for industry professionals and post-graduate students alike.

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climate-debate

New Paper: Arctic Sea Ice Was Far Less Extensive Than Today During The ‘Ice Free’ Early Holocene

by K. Richard, May 23, 2019 in NoTricksZone

Biomarker evidence for Arctic-region sea ice coverage in the northern Barents Sea indicates the most extensive sea ice conditions of the last 9,500 years occurred during the 20th century (0 cal yr BP). In contrast, this region was ice free with open water conditions during the Early Holocene (9,500-5,800 years ago).

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climate-debate

Greenland Temperature Data For 2018

by P. Homewood, April 24, 2019 in NotaLotOfPeopleKnowThat

The DMI has just published its Greenland Climate Data Collection for last year, and it is worth looking at the temperature data:

There are six stations with long records, Upernavik, Nuuk, Ilulissat, Qaqortoq, Narsarsuaq and Tasilaq.

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Throughout Greenland we find that temperatures in the last two decades are little different to the 1920s to 60s.

The only exceptions were 2010 on the west coast sites, which was an unusually warm year, and 2016 on the east coast at Tasilaq, another warm year there.

Noticeably, last year was actually colder than the 1981-2010 average at all of the west and south coast stations.

 

climate-debate

The big Arctic Sea-Ice shift of 2007: Ice refuses to melt

by Javier, April 23, 2019 in WUWT

I have maintained since 2015 that in the 2006-2007 season the Arctic underwent a cyclical phase shift, and the rapid sea-ice melting observed over the previous decades ended. A few scientists predicted or explained this shift based on their study of multi-decadal oscillations (see bibliography). They were ignored by mainstream climatology and the press because the “anthropogenic” melting of the Arctic is one of the main selling points of the climate scare. See for example:

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Year after year the data supports my view over the desperate scaremongers like Tamino. With the passing of time it is more and more difficult to defend the idea that Arctic melting is continuing, so alarmists keep changing the metric. First it was September sea-ice extent (SIE), then September sea-ice volume, and now annual average SIE. However, the reference measurements are September minimum SIE and March maximum SIE.

This article is more than a biannual update on the Arctic ice situation, as I will focus specifically on showing evidence for the trend change that took place in 2007. As 12 years have passed since the shift, the best way is to compare the 2007-2019 period with the previous 1994-2006 period of equal length to display the striking differences between both periods.

Figure 1. Changes in September SIE for both periods as a percentage change over the first year of the period.

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climate-debate

Arctic Ice Gain Embarrasses Global Warming Scientists. 40-Year Meteorologist: “Don’t Be Surprised Over What Happens Next 10 -15 Years!

by P. Gosselin, April 21, 2019 in NoTricksZone

Yesterday I wrote here how some scientists misrepresent the observed data concerning Greenland ice melt in order to get the alarming results they want. There we see that Greenland has been melting, but recently much more slowly than what we are often led to believe.

Looking at the latest Greenland ice volume data from the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), we see that currently the ice volume is below normal, but well within the range of the past 17 years:

Data source: Danish Meteorological Institute. Chart by Kirye.

Also Tony Heller at Real Science here plotted Arctic ice volume for the past 12 years in succession. Here’s how all the media-claimed rapid Arctic melting really looks

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