From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

We can now provisionally declare that Arctic Sea ice hit its minimum extent on September 10, relatively early this year, measured at 4.602 million sq km. This compares to the 2011 – 2020 average of 4.422 million sq km.

For a clear picture, I have charted the annual minimums since 2001. It shows the same story as in previous years – a sudden decline in extent in 2007, since when things have remained stable.

This was not, of course, how things were supposed to be!

Over the years we have been assured by many experts that all the sea ice in the Arctic would soon have melted away.

In 2007, for instance, Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told us that northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.  In December that year, Jay Zwally of NASA agreed, giving the ice till 2012.

A year later, Professor David Barber went one step further, saying the ice would all be gone that very summer.

For sheer persistence in getting it wrong, however, the prize must go to Professor Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics, and Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge:

• In 2012, he predicted that the Arctic would be ice free by 2015/16.
• In 2014, he thought it might last till 2020
• In 2016, he confidently predicted the Arctic would be ice free that summer (though curiously he now defined “ice free” as less than 1 million square kilometers!)