Summer is Over, So Where Is the Return of the Sea Ice?

In today's Freak Weather News, scientists are scrambling to figure out why Arctic sea ice isn't regrowing as expected now that summer is over.

The air over the high Arctic is anomalously warm compared to the decades-long average, Lars Kaleschke, an Arctic scientist at the University of Hamburg's Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability, said over email. In mid-October, the temperatures here should be plummeting. But they've gone up. 

While temperatures are still hovering near freezing in these high northern realms, they're presently around a whopping 18 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) above the 1958 to 2002 average for this time of year.

A formidable mass of high atmospheric pressure stretching all the way from Alaska to the North Pole has pushed relatively warm air from the North Pacific Ocean into the Arctic, noted Labe.

"Both the ocean and atmosphere are warmer than usual," said Kaleschke. 

It's difficult, however, to know whether it's warm air or ocean waters that are playing a stronger role in suppressing the growth of ice in this remote Arctic sea, said Kaleschke.

Meanwhile, bless her little heart, Mother Corp., a.k.a. the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, has discovered that the Arctic is warming, like really fast, and it's messing up the climate.  Trust the CBC to bury its climate change reports in its wildly popular "technology & science" section. Today's lead story there is "baby mice produced from 2 moms, no dad." There's an attention grabber, eh?