Hardly any sea ice left around the North Pole - 09/08/2016

The question in my mind is how this breaking-up ice by the North Pole is going to be presented when finally the mass media is forced to report on  this. Does the breaking-up of the ice represent ice, or does it not?

The one picture is worth a thousand words.

Arctic Sea Ice September 2016

On September 8, 2016, there was hardly any sea ice left around the North Pole, as illustrated by the image below.

Arctic News,

8 September, 2016

The image below, made with a screenshot from ads.nipr.ac.jp, shows that, on September 7, 2016, Arctic sea ice extent (i.e. areas with 15% ice or more) was 4.02 million square km. While this is more than the minimum extent was in 2012, it is less that the minimum extent was for all other years on the image. 

The image below shows extent as calculated by NSIDC.org, which is only slightly different from the above image.

Even more frightening than sea ice extent is sea ice thickness, as illustrated by the image on the right, showing a nowcast (in m), run on September 7, 2016, and valid for September 8, 2016.

The image shows that the multi-year sea ice has now virtually disappeared and that there's virtually no buffer left to absorb ocean heat.

The Naval Research Lab animations below show the shrinking of sea ice thickness (left) and compressive strength (right) in the Beaufort Sea up to September 5, 2016, with a forecast up to September 11, 2016.

Click on images to enlarge

Coasts of Alaska is at the bottom, of Canada on the right

The image below shows Arctic sea surface temperature anomalies on September 4, 2016.

Meanwhile, the methane situation looks very threatening. The image below gives an update on the high levels recently recorded at Barrow, Alaska.

The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action as described at the Climate Plan.