Ice Caps

Global

  • June 8, 1972, Christian Science Monitor: “Arctic specialist Bernt Balchen says a general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000.”
  • 2007, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.” – National Geographic – 12 December 2007
  • 2008, “Arctic death spirals, tipping points, and runaway melting”. – Mark Serreze, Arctic ‘climate expert’
  • Dec 2009, “Polar Ice Caps may disappear by summer 2014.” – Al Gore, USA Today
  • Nov 2011, “The fall-off in ice volume is so fast that it is going to bring us to zero very quickly. 2015 is a very serious prediction and I think I am pretty much persuaded that that’s when it will happen.”
    – Prof Peter Wadhams Cambridge University

BUT this is what really happened –

Global total sea ice area 1979 to 2014http://www.climate4you.com/images/NSIDC%20GlobalArcticAntarctic%20SeaIceArea.gif

As can be seen from top line – there is very little change in total global sea ice in 35yrs.
(Since 2005, the amount of sea ice on Earth has grown by about the area of California and France combined.
In a few days it will likely be back above the 30 year mean.)
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/2015-12-10-06-46-49.png

Arctic sea ice extent Aug 18 2015 – https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CdeFr76UEAABwIH.jpg

The Arctic is slowly recovering from the large melts in solar cycle 23. (2007, 2012) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle_23

Arctic Sea Ice Thickness

 

The Antarctic looks pretty healthy.
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/antarctic-sea-ice-reaches-new-record-maximum

For more details see Cryosphere Today – http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/

All the sea ice graphs & links grouped for easy reference.

https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/