It’s been a really cold winter you know, colder than for a very, very long time.  It means GW must be a hoax, look at all that extra ice out there in the Arctic!  Look China, India, the Middle East and Turkey have all had incredibly cold winters with much snow.

The Heartland institute tell us it’s because the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming, or to make it longer, “Us who are warming this planet up”), stories are a plant to get more taxes out of us.

It’s not warming up.  Noooo, It’s getting colder.  Can’t you tell it was a super cold winter.

Somebody find me a sickbucket.

Why, oh why, does the weather of the world have to correspond to the observations of the US.  Yes it was a cold winter.  Exactly that, One Cold Winter.

So what was happening in the rest of the world whilst America, China and the Middle East were deluged in Snow and Ice?

Well I suppose the Scandinavian countries would not be of interest?  Nor far north western Russia?  Or most of Europe?  I guess not.

Why?

Because Scandinavia didn’t have a winter this year!

Run that by me again?

Norway, Sweden, findland, the Baltic states and most of Western Russia simply didn’t have much of a winter.  France and Poland had the warmest winters since records began.

If we go further north and west and up to the northwest passage, the heartland of the “Cold Winter” country, the Arctic Ice around Banks Island was open for hundreds of KM.  Yes open water in the middle of the coldest winter since “way back when”.

OK, so when we stop cherrypicking the results we want o see, what happened?

Well it seems that the Eastern North Atlantic, this winter, was 3 DegC warmer than usual.

OK, so what caused that?

Well we don’t know right now, but if you cast your mind back to the very late re-formation of ice last year; you will note that the reason stated was that the sea was circa 3 DegC warmer than usual at that time.

It would appear that the crust of Ice on top of the sea only kept the energy locked in and it has migrated over the winter to keep Northern Europe warm.

This would then lend credence to the IPCC position that Arctic warming will replace the Gulf Stream as the warming factor for Britain and Northern Europe during the winter.  In fact it seems to be doing a better job overall.

Personally I wouldn’t want to be a shareholder in a winter tyre company in Europe right now.

So what is the Ice doing in the Arctic now?

Well the heartland institute would have you believe that it’s thicker, stronger and more extensive than at any time on the last decade.

Is this true?

Of course not.  The current ice is thinner than at any time since our records began.  Except, or course, inbetween Greenland and Canada.  There it is approximately 20CM thicker.  What does that mean?   Absolutely zip because that Ice melts Every Year and so it will be lost in this years summer melt.

Another 30% of the thicker Old Ice was flushed out last winter leaving a very thin rear guard of Ice to cope with the 2008 summer.  We are talking 2-6M ice being replaced with 40-60cm ice.  A little bigger difference than the relatively small growth of 20cm extra annual Ice.

And what is it doing?  Well you need to understand the difference between:

Extent

Area

Volume

The main figures are given in Extent.  It is the main marker and is used extensively.  Ice Extent is considered to be any area of the sea covered by 15% or more Ice.

Sometimes the figures are given in Area.  Area is only the Ice with ALL sea areas taken out.  So when the Extent figures were given in 2007, they stated 4.0M SQ KM.  YET the Area figures were 2.9M SQ KM.  Given all the focus on albedo (the ability of Ice to reflect sunlight and the open sea to absorb it), I would have thought that only Area would have been used.

Almost never until this month have I seen a Volume figure.  The volume is the Area x tickness.

So what is happening?

Well the Extent is reaching back to 2000 levels.  Yes I said 2000, not 1997 or some such other figures.  Not that you would guess that from the heartland institute.

The Area is falling fast although it did recover to 2004 levels.

The Volume is falling even faster as the thick Ice is flushed.  Also right now the concentration of the Ice over nearly 50% of the Arctic is less than 100% with huge leads of open water and massive “patches” (thousands of SQKM) of mixed broken ice and open water.

What does this mean in real mans terms?

It’s melting, pretty damned fast and dramatically, but we can’t see it in the stats yet because the extent was so large this year.  But it is melting in places where it was solid at the end of last summer.

This happened in 2005/6.  I had a very pessimistic stance on this blog last year at this time.  Why was that?  Because I had taken the overheads from the 2005 minimum ice and the 2006 minimum ice.  I overlaid them and noticed that some 1.5msq km of ice had (changed places) and the perennial ice which melted in 2005 was replaced by annual ice for the 2006 season and new areas of perennial ice had melted in 2006.  So although, technically, 2006 was a lower melt year than 2005, in actual fact the Amount of ice (volume), lost was significantly more.

So where are we going?

Well I was beaten to the post this time by a Norwegian climate scientist.

Where we are going is here:

IF we have a summer of equivalent heat and radiance (low clouds) as we did in 2007, in the arctic this year, then we will functionally (I don’t count less than 1mSQ KM), lose all summer ice in the Arctic this year.

I shall be watching.

Last week has to be a fairly all time low.  Better half takes me to the train station. We decide I’ll not go to work on Monday as it’s Easter Monady and I can do the meetings from home anyway.  So we get the tickets for Wife and I (she was picking the Grandson up from the airport on the 31^st), then come home.

Day1: 4am up and back with the tickets.  I have changed my ticket to 05:06 on Tuesday so it’ll be up early tomorrow.

I complete some of the Ceiling work I’m doing with plasterboard and we have a fairly relaxing evening.

Day2:  Up at 3am, climb on the bike with the gear and head for the station.  Get about half way, start to lay the bike down for the 3^rd wet roundabout and the front wheel goes flying off down the road taking me and the rest of the bike with it.

Bastard, bastard, bastard.  To add insult to injury the sodding bike won’t start.

To cut a long story short, after discarding the totally destroyed bike suit and trying for an hour to get the bike going, I have to wake up the better half and yowl for help.  She picks me up and I finally warm up on the way to Poitiers to get jump leads.  Why?  Because the bloody jump starter is flat again even though it has never been used since it was last charged.  When we head off to Poitiers I see the line of Diesel fuel on the roundabout....  Did I mention that bikers hate truckers who overfill their fuel tanks?

So I get the jump leads and still nothing.  Eventually I determine that there is no spark.  I find a screwdriver kit in the boot of the car (thank god I put that here) and open up the (worse for wear) headlight enclosure.

I fiddle with all the wires and connections and get nothing but one short start.

Bugger, bugger, bugger.

In the end back inside the light casing and pull all the connector blocks out.  Magic, it runs.

So I put the lights back together whilst it’s running and aim to head off for a later train (I have a fully flexible ticket).

I decide to stop the bike and start it again just in case.  I turn the key off and, hey presto, the engine continues to run.  The kill switch won’t run either.

Bugger, bugger, bugger.

Back home.  Work from home.

Day 3:

Better half takes me to the train station for the 05:06 train and leaves me there, another 3am start.  There is no 05:06 train!  Bloody French, can’t you run a timetable?  Probably but not the one I want.

So I’m stuck waiting for the train, I go down onto the platform and get into one of the heated rest areas until the station opens.

When the station opens, I put my ticket into the machine to change it.  The machine eats it and then asks for my ticket.

I remonstrate with the train staff at the station, but they can do nothing.  I have to wait till the ticket office opens and the boss arrives.  07:30, after the second train and I’m not going to make it to work till after Lunch.

Sod it, can it get any worse?  Another €90 lost.

Get to work, go to the hotel and check in feeling the worse for wear.

Day4:

12 hours sleep.  Almost human.  Have a Cold.

OK which god’s daughter did I rape??????

Day5:

Work all day, back to the train station wife picks me up.  Cold is now out of control.

Day6:

Son is here with Girlfriend it looks good so we go out to Monkey Valley for the day.  I feel like crap, can’t stop coughing and sneezing.  My chest is beginning to hurt and my stomach muscles too.  Will this day never end?

Day7:

Recovery is at hand.  The cold is dying out.  Things are getting better.  It’s Monday tomorrow, time to get up at 04:30 and take a train again….