Image by AlKalenski from Pixabay
By Jo Nova
Something huge is happening around Antarctica and the experts didn’t see it coming
More than a million square kilometers of ice has gone:
Since 2015, the continent has shed sea ice equivalent to the area of Greenland. Researchers call it the largest environmental shift detected anywhere on Earth in recent decades.
Everything about Antarctica has defied the experts. For years Antarctic sea ice expanded when it wasn’t supposed to. Then, suddenly in 2016 the sea ice around Antarctica dramatically started to shrink, and that wasn’t supposed to happen either. Scientists wondered at the time if it was just a temporary blip, but then it got even smaller. Holes in the sea ice “as big as Switzerland” have started to appear for the first time since the mid 1970s.
To explain this mystery (that was rarely mentioned) a new paper suggests the salinity of surface waters has changed. We’re not just talking about a small piece of ocean, this is everything south of 50°. For decades, the surface of the polar Southern Ocean was getting less salty — an “expected response to a warming climate” they said that started in about 1980, “however, this trend reversed abruptly after 2015”.
So as news seeps out this week that there is a “dangerous feedback loop” where shrinking ice is warming the ocean, bear in mind that the experts also admit this is “completely unexpected” which is their way of saying “the models were wrong”. Carbon dioxide was not supposed to do this.
Most likely some large natural cycle has shifted gears. Steadily rising CO2 didn’t cause the rise in sea level before 2015, and didn’t cause the decline after that either. There are bigger forces at work, and we don’t know what they are…
Graph adapted from Climate4You
When the die-hard believers point out that Antarctica is “just catching up” and that they always said Antarctic sea ice would shrink, remind them that Turner et al said in 2013 ““The increase in Antarctic sea ice remains one of the great unsolved puzzles of climate science.”. Now they have a new theory, “the salinity changed” — but what caused that? They don’t know. They might as well be tea leaf readers when it comes to predicting the climate.
For years Antarctica was going to warm twice as fast as the rest of the world (remember polar amplification?) But the whole idea that warming would be double-bad at the poles depended on feedbacks. In the disaster scenario, as the reflective white ice queen melted — the dark hungry ocean would absorb more heat, which would melt even more ice.
Unfortunately the modelers still can’t explain ocean currents, clouds, or rain. The bad news is that we live on the Water Planet and their models can’t predict water.
Blame the salt?
Ten years after the mysterious shift began, the new post hoc explanation is salt. They were sure that as Antarctica catastrophically melted and poured freshwater into the oceans the water nearby would become less saline. This, they assumed would form a neat surface layer, keeping the deeper, saltier, and denser water from rising up and mixing. Instead, after 2015, the surface water got more salty, the neat layers that were supposed to stratify started to churn, and the warm water from below started to melt the ice from underneath.
That’s a pretty huge shift there, that Earth system modelers had no idea was coming….
Climate modelers must be feeling pretty spooked by now. It’s been ten years since Antarctic Sea Ice started behaving in a way they couldn’t explain, and it obviously isn’t because of our rising emissions.
What they are not honest enough to say is that for forty years they have completely oversold their models and their certainty, while the world suffered, and bet trillions on their guesses. They have no idea how to predict the catastrophic feedback loops, which may not even exist, and that it all may have nothing to do with CO2.
And now some try to paint the shift they didn’t see coming as more proof “it’s worse than we thought”.
Antarctica’s ocean flip: Satellites catch sudden salt surge melting ice from below
ScienceDaily
A massive and surprising change is unfolding around Antarctica. Scientists have discovered that the Southern Ocean is getting saltier, and sea ice is melting at record speed, enough to match the size of Greenland. This change has reversed a decades-long trend and is letting hidden heat rise to the surface, melting the ice from below. One of the most dramatic signs is the return of a giant hole in the ice that hadn’t been seen in 50 years. The consequences are global: stronger storms, warmer oceans, and serious trouble for penguins and other polar wildlife.
Since 2015, Antarctica has lost sea ice equal to the size of Greenland — the largest environmental shift seen anywhere on Earth in the last decades. The Southern Ocean is also getting saltier, and this unexpected change is making the problem worse.
For decades, the ocean’s surface freshened (becoming less salty), helping sea ice grow. Now, scientists say that trend has sharply reversed.
Using European satellite data, research led by the University of Southampton has discovered a sudden rise in surface salinity south of 50° latitude.
This has coincided with a dramatic loss of sea ice around Antarctica and the re-emergence of the Maud Rise polynya in the Weddell Sea – a huge hole in the sea ice nearly four times the size of Wales, which hadn’t occurred since the 1970s.
The findings were published on June 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr Alessandro Silvano from the University of Southampton who led the research said: “Saltier surface water allows deep ocean heat to rise more easily, melting sea ice from below. It’s a dangerous feedback loop: less ice leads to more heat, which leads to even less ice.
“The return of the Maud Rise polynya signals just how unusual the current conditions are. If this salty, low-ice state continues, it could permanently reshape the Southern Ocean — and with it, the planet. The effects are already global: stronger storms, warmer oceans, and shrinking habitats for penguins and other iconic Antarctic wildlife.”
In these polar waters, cold, fresh surface water overlays warmer, saltier waters from the deep. In the winter, as the surface cools and sea ice forms, the density difference (stratification) between water layers weakens, allowing these layers to mix and heat to be transported upward, melting the sea ice from below and limiting its growth.
Since the early 1980s, the surface of the Southern Ocean had been freshening, and stratification had been strengthening, trapping heat below and sustaining more sea ice coverage.
Now, new satellite technology, combined with information from floating robotic devices which travel up and down the water column, shows this trend has reversed; surface salinity is increasing, stratification is weakening, and sea ice has reached multiple record lows — with large openings of open ocean in the sea ice (polynyas) returning.
It’s the first time scientists have been able to monitor these changes in the Southern Ocean in real-time.
Contrary to the new findings, man-made climate change was generally expected to sustain Antarctic Sea ice cover over the coming years.
Aditya Narayanan, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Southampton and co-author on the paper, explains: “While scientists expected that human-driven climate change would eventually lead to Antarctic Sea ice decline, the timing and nature of this shift remained uncertain.
“Previous projections emphasized enhanced surface freshening and stronger ocean stratification, which could have supported sustained sea ice cover. Instead, a rapid reduction in sea ice — an important reflector of solar radiation — has occurred, potentially accelerating global warming.”
Give Prof Garabeto a medal, at least he admits they can’t predict the future:
Professor Alberto Naveira Garabato, co-author of the study and Regius Professor of Ocean Sciences at the University of Southampton added: “The new findings suggest that our current understanding may be insufficient to accurately predict future changes.”
Not far from the southern pole,
Melting sea ice has left a great hole,
A polar opposite trend,
To what alarmists portend,
By their climate-change rigamarole.
— Ruairi
REFERENCE
Alessandro Silvano, Aditya Narayanan, Rafael Catany, Estrella Olmedo, Veronica Gonzalez; Gambau, Antonio Turiel, Roberto Sabia, Matthew R. Mazloff, Theo Spira, F. Alexander Haumann, Alberto C. Naveira Garabato. (2025) Rising surface salinity and declining sea ice: A new Southern Ocean state revealed by satellites. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2025; 122 (27) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2500440122
You deserve a medal too Jo.
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‘The Order of Australia recognises Australians who have demonstrated outstanding service or exceptional achievement.’
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Meh- holes in the ice, holes in the ozone layer… give it a couple of years and this will be ignored and some new holes discovered!
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They have to make up for the missing ozone hole somehow.
And how much did getting rid of efficient refrigerants because of that cost the world?
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A DuPont scam.
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Patent was running out so we have this nice new patented gas that’s ozone friendly for you/sarc/
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Restricting the use of CFC’s reduced the size of the ozone hole, which is exactly what the scientific experts told you would happen. The irony is that the ozone hole was helping to keep Antarctica insulated, now it’s warming just like the rest of the planet.
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Again, more absolute rubbish. The ozone hole has been relatively large and long-lived in recent years, including 2021, 2022, and 2023, with the 2023 hole reaching 26 million square kilometres.
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The amount of solar radiation is very low at 70-90 degrees S. region.
It is below freezing in about 95% of Antarctica in the short summer and 100% in Fall, Winter and Spring.
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There was NO “hole” in the Ozone layer. It was and remains, subject to a phenomenon called “lensing”; a cyclic thinning. Bear in mind the the angle of incidence of the solar radiation has a LOT to do with the variations in the Ozone layer. UV ripping apart ultra-stable CFCs to release molecular Chlorine? The same Chlorine that continuously spews from six, or so, ACTIVE volcanoes on that chilly piece of real-estate. There may be a LOT more subterranean stuff going on; like the bizarre underground lake systems that appear to have been recently discovered.
Also, unlike the Arctic, Antarctica has a significant circum-polar system, both air and water. All That “snapped-off” ice also delivers a steady rain of organic detritus,( dead penguins and seals, long-lost polar explorers), into those circulating waters; food for the microbes, which are the food for Krill. etc. In their turn Krill feed the ;larger marine life from “tiddlers” to blue whales. It is ALL about “political” science anyway. Does anybody else remember all the global angst about the Japanese whaling operations in antarctic waters? BTW, you can still but canned whale meat in a lot of Japanese “delis”.
Keep your hand up if you also remember the total lack of “excitement” about the fleet of soviet Krill scooping ships. Not for direct human consumption, but as “fish meal” in stock feed.. The cetaceans went hungry and changed their feeding and migration patterns for YEARS.
BTW, the ice that is floating loose originated somewhere “inland”, it has been shoved to the coast by continuing snowfall / frigid conditions. See also “Glaciers”. There is a narrow window for optimum glacial movement. Too warm and the face will melt even before it gets started. Too cold? How can it be too cold for a glacier?
Easy . Think on a serious scale. What is snow? Frozen water. What is the source of that water in the upper atmosphere? Evaporation. So, if the “general” temperature fall too far over a large are of ocean, there is a LOT less evaporation. Kindergarten Meteorology 101.
Lots of snow at the Neve and the sheer mass starts to shove the compacted snow / “ice” downhill. Not much snow and the face, away downhill melts. And so doe the entire glacier; but it melts from UNDERNEATH because of the pressure between the “rock” and the ice; like an inverted ice skate. Glaciers “retreat from such melting. They DO NOT shuffle their way backwards up the valley.
That Ozone layer is ONLY there because of solar radiation. Ozone is an unstable TOXIC variant of Oxygen.
Mind you, Oxygen is not entirely sweetness and light Ask a serious diver. “Everybody” knows about the perils ofv Nitrogen under pressure, but serious folk are also aware that Oxygen is outright TOXIC at a couple of atmospheres pressure.
And STILL, nobody has adequately explained how all those MASSIVE CFC molecules defied general atmospheric behaviour and crossed the equator and then headed much further south.
“Freon” (of which there are several variants” is a huge molecule and it generally heads for ye floor, even in a warm workshop.When I was using the stuff to clean “filled” printed circuit boards, it was easy to observe the vapour cascading off the workbench, shimmering across the floor and disappearing outside via the gap under the door.
And the really interesting CFCs like Halon, are so stable that they were / are used to extinguish burning aluminium and magnesium ( crashed aircraft.. Why? Because water simply evaporates on its way from the fire hose to the fire; such are the temperatures. CO2 (naughty, naughty)? the heat of said metal fires rips CO2 apart and as per junior high-school demos in the good-old days, a burning magnesium ribbon, when dropped into s container of CO2, CONTINUES to BURN. Serious militaries just ignored the CFC / Halon “ban’ and maintained and improved their automatic fire suppression systems in armoured vehicles
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doesnt look like it worked too well
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Possibly holes in their arguments also KP….
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It’s the same as “the boy who cried wolf”.
The more they sprout this nonsense, the more people are going to ignore them.
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“How many holes to fill up the Albert Hall?”
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The original version is:-
“Now we know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
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A Day In The Life.
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some new holes discovered
Perhaps within volcano cones/vents?
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They would only feel that if they were governed by evidence-based science and logic.
They aren’t. They just “make it up as they go”.
They don’t follow the scientific method but post-modernism which posits that there is no objective truth or objective reality, only what they think is truth or reality.
They believe that what constitutes truth and reality are entirely dependent up individual and cultural perspectives.
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That’s why you always hear Leftists use expressions such as “my truth”, not “the truth”.
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They also use “I mean…”
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No matter how beautiful the model!
So often more ad hoc-ory is required.
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When ice form on the surface of the ocean, it reduces heat loss. If the sun went dark today, it would be 10,000 years before the ice on the oceans was 1km thick. There would still be water at depth until earth’s core solidified.
So shrinking ice is actually cooling the ocean.
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Albedo is hugely different between white reflective ice and dark ocean though. Ice reflects up to 70%. Ocean only 6%. Hence more energy from the sun gets absorbed when the ice is converted to bare ocean.
Remember 50 degrees South is a vast area. In the northern hemisphere this includes all of England, Scandinavia, Russia and parts of Canada north of Calgary. There is quite a lot of radiation even if it is near the pole.
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Two questions I have about this:
1) How much effect does the difference in albedo between the open water and sea ice have during the winter? And compare this to the difference in emissivity between sea water and ice. And you need to account for the convective properties of sea water, versus the ice on top insulating against both convective and radiative heat transfer at the surface.
2) At what solar incidence angle does the reflectivity of sunlight striking the ocean result in total reflectivity regardless of being open ocean. For still water it’s 48.6 degrees. Taking into account wave action, etc., there is still bound to be a point past which the absorption of sunlight is essentially nil in either case. This line of latitude will obviously change over the course of the year, but has anyone published on this?
Is the difference a net positive or negative over the course of the whole year when factoring in these two effects?
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The old story, garbage in- garbage out.
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Or, perhaps, the models of geothermal heat transfer and their effect on ocean temperatures are also very wrong.
There’s nothing like a plume of rising hot water to provide both ocean churn and ice melt.
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There is no evidence that geothermal heat is involved in reducing sea ice, more research is required.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp_anomaly/orthographic=-176.75,-92.06,265
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We don’t even know how many volcanoes are down there, how active they are, and whether that has changed in the last 100 years.
We have no idea how much heat is seeping out of those deep sea vents. We don’t even have Argo bouys monitoring below 2km (which is half the ocean). And above 2km, there is just one sole buoy for every 250,000 cubic kilometers of ocean.
We. know. Nothing.
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How do we know if any of this is true it could all be a bluff you know trump is in the white house there funding is being cut they will soon be unemployed
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‘We. know. Nothing.’
The truest words spoken of the billions written.
Time, endeavour and technology are turning what experts said they knew, on their heads. Climate science is old in age but young in facts, and facts seem to be always changing.
But the most bizarre thing is political leaders are willing to destroy energy systems and economies in obeying international elitist and activist groups with things other than climate on their mind. All based on very early opinion based on limited knowledge.
Who would have thought the non democratic dictatorships of the world proving themselves to be so much smarter than the democracies of the world.
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so new information is gathered which renders some aspects of the forward looking models invalid. This is totally normal. The problem and the cause remain the same however, looking the other way will not help
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This is totally normal is a classic response from climate politics disciples when confronting nature.
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Sure Peter. And the scientists who told us to spend $100 trillion dollars were so dishonest or stupid, they didn’t warn us that their 97% consensus could be totally wrong “if new data came in?.
We don’t expect scientists to actually predict the climate, but we do expect them to be honest about it.
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I don’t understand your logic. Scientists warned that Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent would decrease as the climate warms. Now that process has started, why are you so surprised?
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They decreased because of slightly warmer water, the air temperature is too cold to cause such melting.
There have been plenty of published papers showing little to NO summer Ice for thousands of years in the Arctic.
Here is a source for a dozen posted papers.
Little to no Summer ice in the Arctic
LINK
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Sensible reasoning..
Firstly, maybe increased Antarctic Ice Sheet melting is not happening – maybe the opposite.
Secondly, if these sea ice changes are unprecedented in the satellite record, imagine the changes that may have occurred during the last 30-40 million years of Antarctic sea ice extents!
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And the BAS study or Turner et al has told us that the Antarctic peninsula has been cooling since 1998.
I’m sure they’re now clutching at straws and this process could be entirely natural. They certainly haven’t got a clue.
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And what is the contribution of under sea and under ice volcanoes to all this?
None of the models even recognise their existence.
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Greenland… Switzerland… Wales…
Such diversity in troubled times of minor fluctuations. Whatever happened to Rhode Island and/or Olympic-sized swimming pools? I was almost convinced the science of size was settled yet here they go changing their ‘parameters’ once again.
Any suggestions for next month’s flavour? How about the size of Australia’s national debt? Maybe big as the number of immigrants washing up on Blighty’s shore? Or as large as a pile of old broken wind turbines?
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“…huge hole in sea ice… not seen since the 1970’s” Pray tell, what caused ‘that’ hole? The ‘Evil’ CO2 was only at 325ppm in 1970, just slightly above pre industrial levels of 280ppm.
I sense scientists hunting the Southern Ocean for new funding grants.
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I’m late to this thread but was going to make almost the same comment.
Great minds and all that — 🤠
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That’s when they first started looking at the sea ice with satellites. For all we know, big polynyas are the normal situation, and we’ve just returned to normal.
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Maybe all those desalination plants that dump the salt back into the sea?
Maybe the thermohaline current is cycling?
Of course we all know it’s due to cow farts.
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The prediction by fourier analysis of the mathematicians led by Carl Otto Weiss was the end of the De Vries Cycle and the AMO/PDO cycle and a drop in temperature of about 2C, sun and ocean only. Of course they did not predict exactly how this would happen, but I have never seen such a good fit to real thermometer temperature data. This was specifically using data from six cities in Europe with a rapid drop in temperature. But given these are world events, rapid changes in other places related to sun intensity and ocean currents could be expected. Regardless of near constant CO2 which moves very slowly at 0.4% pa.
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And I have always been struck by the oddness of a single planetary temperature. The oceans are on average 3500metres deep which means they weigh 350x atmospheres. And water is 4x the specific heat, so 1400x the total energy. Hot air makes no difference to the ocean and the ocean surfaces are never very hot, so they do not have this problem with back radiation as they do not lose much heat by radiation. Hot water doesn’t expand much compared to hot air, so you do not get the mixing. And there is only one surface to release heat. A gigantic heat bank then.
Heat also does not flow quickly. The gulf stream for example is a current at 9km/hr of hot water through some very cold oceans. At 100km wide and 1km deep it is only an example of how ocean currents can move heat and cold around and up and down. Like the Humboldt current up the coast of South America.
So what do we study to predict climatic changes? The air. It can heat to 50C and cool to -10C in one day in a water free desert. It is what we see as weather but it of little consequence except to us.
And we presume that the whole world moves as one in temperature, when there is every chance the Southern Hemisphere is quite independent of the North. That the half of the world which is the Pacific ocean is unaffected by weather in England or v.v.
As for CO2 being the most important driver of climate, who said? Mathematically illiterate politicians like Al Gore.
What is most worrying is that the quite extreme idea that man can change world CO2 and that this is a critical factor in the climates of the world has never been debated. It has become politician science, not real science. And if you dare question The Science, you are called a Climate Denier. But it has never been proven that small slow changes in CO2 have any impact at all or even that humans are responsible.
It’s nice to see that the planet does not agree with billionaire Al Gore. But he could not care less. As founding leader of the Climatebaggers, it has made him very rich and famous. And funded the UN, a political group with 80,000 people looking for more tens of billions annually in cash for nothing. And do the politicians in Australia care that Climate Change is all about the money and power? No, that it is the entire point. And the Chinese manufacturers of windmills, transmission lines and solar panels and electric cars and exploding batteries cannot believe the gullibility.
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Why use a Fourier Transform when we already know the physical equations that govern weather and climate?
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What a silly comment. Look up Fourier Transform.
I take the red thumb as a badge of honour.
My dad had a Fourier Transform. It could sit up and beg.
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“We already know the physical equations that govern weather and climate.” Absolute bollocks. Climate models have been shown to be completely inadequate in so many areas it’s not funny. Try looking at some real science instead.
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I think he meant Physics Equations. And as a lay-person who has met a few physicists along the way, I find they are the most vehement in the philosophy that no science is ever settled. Physicists get Wittgenstein, for example. (that we don’t even have the language necessary to describe, discuss and document the unknown)
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How do you know there isn’t a volcano erupting blowin thru the ice?
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When it comes to the ocean, what we don’t know far exceeds what we do. Which is odd considering the tens of trillions trying to fix a perceived and tiny atmospheric problem when the oceans contain 99.9% of all surface heat.
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‘ … have started to appear for the first time since the mid 1970s.’
The great climate shift of 1976.
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“There are bigger forces at work, and we don’t know what they are … ”
No.
We have Science.
Soon as we build a bigger super collider and we blow up the tiniest stuff so there’s no stuff left to blow up, we’ll have it all figured.
And probably a vaccine for each day of the year.
With a booster for Leap Year.
Or not.
I’ve never gotten that Leap Year thing straight.
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My understanding is that the southern ice mass was being insulated by the ozone hole plus an increase in circum-polar winds due to (ironically) the increase in temperature differential and decadal weather patterns. Things change, and sea ice extent is decreasing in both hemispheres, which is what the scientists have been telling us was going to happen for over 40 years now.
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Well,, you might as well go the whole hog there Simon. Perhaps it was the effects of acid rain as well. Maybe even the Y2K bug which was working in combination with a virus from the pangolin soup from that Wuhan wet market.
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‘Things change….’ Yes and we don’t fully know why.
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‘ … the scientists have been telling us …’
No good appealing to authority, we can work it out without their bias.
Weak El Nino and a positive SAM trend are behind a reduction in sea ice.
https://chaac.meteo.plus/en/climate/aao-index-monthly.png
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I can think of no greater threat to Huperson-non-binary-ity kind than the slow decline of sea ice extent.
Except for, racism, sexism, transphobia, Islamophobia, Joe Rogan and Trump.
(Apologies to the British government if I left anything out.)
Oh … and J.K Rowling … and the indigenous population of Britain.
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Of course there are many recent Antarctic studies that show that it is colder today and more ice than any period over the last 5000 years.
Here’s a link to a few of the recent studies. And Antarctica was warmer during the MWP about 1000 years ago.
https://notrickszone.com/2024/04/15/antarctica-is-colder-icier-now-than-any-time-in-5000-years-the-last-warm-period-was-1000-years-ago/
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I wonder why it is that the commenters here avoid suggesting that it could be climate change that is causing ice warming and subsequent ice melting’
Fortunately the authors of the paper are real scientists who state “While scientists expected that human-driven climate change would eventually lead to Antarctic Sea ice decline, the timing and nature of this shift remained uncertain.” and ““The new findings suggest that our current understanding may be insufficient to accurately predict future changes.”,
And all credit to JoNova for publishing an article that suggests changes in the planet might be due to climate change.
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Nobody denies natural climate change, but it is wise to question anthropogenic climate change.
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So Ian, why do our emissions cause sea ice to grow to 2015, then even more emissions cause it to start shrinking in 2016? Any idea?
Real scientists wouldn’t have told us they *knew* what would happen in Antarctica. And they would have spoken up every time one of the fake scientists said they did know.
where are the real scientists? Sacked, exiled, and speaking on blogs or doing some other career now.
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The article says the exact reverse, as you know. And the universal explanation for all things, Climate Change, says nothing about this. It’s just a shame no one saw it coming.
So of course it is fully explained by Climate Change as something has changed and therefore it is Climate Change. Caused as always by a CO2 change of a tiny 3% over ten years.
Is there nothing CO2 cannot do? Often very quickly.
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Ian says “and subsequent ice melting”, implying that heat from CO2 is the answer, but:
The reason that the ice melts is that it is gradually pushed away from its original cold location into the ocean which is warmer or can allow the ice to float away to the tropics.
https://www.joannenova.com.au/2025/07/suddenly-2-million-square-km-of-sea-ice-is-missing-near-antarctica-and-all-the-climate-models-were-wrong/#comment-2857724
Sea ice is thus caused by rain and snow on the poles.
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Ian’s question-‘I wonder why it is that the commenters here avoid suggesting that it could be climate change
that * is* causing ice warming and subsequent ice melting.’ Perhaps because * is* is more a dogma word than a word of science
methodology that embraces nullius in verba.
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The argument is always put in your terms as above Ian, but climate change is not the argument.
The debate is about causality, with true believers being taught to think it’s all about CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
The counter argument is climate change has always been occuring and is due to the interactive forces of the universe, including the sun. CO2 is the official opinion based cause without a proof of truth but is the excuse for western government and democrat governments to destroy our cheap energy system based on fossil fuels and replace it with increasingly unaffordable renewable energy systems which cannot serve a modern industrial and technological society.
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All of this is inexplicable and confusing to warmists because they have an Aristotlean world view in which the earth system is deemed to be static and unchanging.
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The coldest temperature recorded at Vostok base was minus 89.2 c in 1983, but lower temps have been recorded since by satellite over Antarctica in 2010, although not at ground level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowest_temperature_recorded_on_Earth
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Sea ice is not that important in the whole climate change debate anyway. Apart from the western parts of Antartica, the on shore ice deposits on the continent largely remain unchanged or are increasing. The continent still holds 90 % of the world’s ice mass. Something is bit odd though- how do you suddenly lose a 1200km x 1200km chunk of sea ice? If that’s the case, what else have the climatologists lost? ( apart from respect, that is)
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Sea ice does matter a lot to our planetary albedo. More ice means a lot more sunlight gets reflected to space. It’s a major feedback.
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I wonder. In an ice age where glaciers reach 40 degrees from the equator. But at 70-80 from the equator, it’s dark for half the year and the angle of incidence is glancing anyway. It may be that the importance of additional albedo from new sea ice is exaggerated. A lot of Siberia/Canada/Scandinavia is covered in ice and snow for more than half the year anyway. Maybe in the Southern Hemisphere.
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As you say: “increasing”.
That’s what causes more sea ice.
https://www.joannenova.com.au/2025/07/suddenly-2-million-square-km-of-sea-ice-is-missing-near-antarctica-and-all-the-climate-models-were-wrong/#comment-2857724
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Watching various documentaries I am always interested when ancient glaciers are discussed when describing deep valleys and similar landscape.
Earth Cycles, naturally!
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It’s hard to attack man made fossil fuel Co2 driven rapid Global Warming just with facts. Because it’s not science. A pseudo science I would call Political Science.
Ultimately the lawmakers keep passing laws demanding more money, more windmills, more transmission towers, more solar even though they are destroying the nation and know it. And if you ask them, they deflect and ignore. In Australia even the Liberals do it. John Howard would not discuss it and says he is ‘agnostic’. Malcolm Turnbull stole $444Million to save the Barrier reef and $12Billion for Snowy II and has no accountability. Morrison signed us up to Net Zero without explanation.
And Labor who promised No Carbon Taxes have brought in massive hidden 35% carbon dioxide taxes, saying they have a ‘mandate’. All political science which cannot explain anything we see in the real world. Because that’s not the intent. It’s all about money and power and a job with the UN. It’s what Rudd wants. And Gillard.
World temperatures could plummet and sea levels drop but Net Zero would stay. That’s the real truth.
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As Green Steel, Green Hydrogen, Green jobs, Green superpower fail as very expensive non science, no one says sorry. As fossil fuel Co2 driven disaster turns out to be absurd, wrong, nothing is said. And as the tide generators, hot rocks, wind farms, solar farms collapsing around the world we in Western Democracies are left without sufficient reliable power. Because it’s about the money and power and trade with China and a new world order. Politics. In other words, lies.
No one is held to account? Not least by our government employees charged with making sure money is not wasted. I read this morning that 100,000 Federal public servants are supposed to be making sure money is not wasted. That’s their job. It was news to me.
Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull should have to return the money and account for every cent. But like all other lies, no one is held to account by the media or the public service. Why again did Anthony Albanese spend $1Billion of our money on a struggling Californian speculative company? Where did the money go? For what? Is this a democracy or a dictatorship?
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It’s organized crime.
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history is simply verifyng the opinions of those that took the effort to read the freely available UN draft copies of its plans for counteracting AGW were. Transference of wealth and handicapping economies of the democracies – ostensibly to let the third world nations proper -could be read throughout. Only the numbers were yet to be filled in. In truth it’s turned out to be a planned destruction of the democracies and a gigantic advantage to the main, enemy of the democracies, China. India thrives only because its government said no way was it going to further repress its people as they were climbing out of poverty.
Only the dumb westerners afloat on a sea of hubris after bringing down the Berlin Wall, floundering on a massive imposed state of guilt over its own success agreed to and developed the worst phases of the UN dictates.
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I read many years ago that active volcanos were under the Antarctic ice, perhaps about 300? They surely have a big effect on the quantity of ice and water temperature. Very little is published noe about undersea volcanoes affecting things.
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How many people really believe the earth is a ball of molten iron at 10,000C, just under a very thin crust? A crust so hot that the temperature increases 25C per kilometer down. That’s impossible. People know it’s very cold in a hole. So most people see the weather as just the air and clouds above, wind and storms and rain and snow. That’s their world.
They cannot relate to the reality of the vast deep oceans or the sheer power of the sun let alone the superheated ball of metal on which even the continents are drifting like leaves on a lake. For such people Antarctica is far too cold for volcanoes. So they don’t exist.
In fact I get this when people ask when the ice sheets at the poles are going to vanish. As if Antarctica, 3.5Km high solid ice and the size of two Australias located the South Pole through six months of pitch black is going to melt if the air heats a little.
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Speaking of dark cold holes in the ground..
“My friend keeps saying “ cheer up man it could be worse, you could be stuck underground in a hole full of water”. I know he means well.
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😀
That 10,000 would be °F.
It’s about. 6,000°C max.
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Climate models are made for the agenda.
https://rumble.com/v6u90s7-the-agenda-their-vision-your-future-2025-full-documentary-oracle-films.html
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A great post and comments: so much to endorse in both areas.
One thing that’s important to note is that sea ice is pushed off the land by a horizontal force coming from ice that’s further inland.
Ice may seem to be very solid and tough, but in fact it is a substance that can display significant plasticity and deform and reshape while still remaining solid.
This is at the heart of the “sea ice” issue.
Increased rain and or snow on the cold polar regions can lead to a build-up of ice which exerts a vertical load on the ice below. The ice under that pressure is caught between the solid ground of the Antarctic and the new ice above and has only one option: distort and flow towards the region of least resistance: the land edge/ocean.
Here it eventually leaves the land and cracks off into the ocean to become sea ice.
Sea ice is thus caused by rain and snow on the poles.
Has anyone checked the total ice covering the poles and related this to sea ice?
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Volcanism causing mixing of strata in the water as well as adding heat? Seems elsewhere in the world, where we can see it, volcanism is on the rise, so undersea volcanism is likely to also be on the rise.
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I’m looking foward to the link between boiling acidic oceans and inceased salinity
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That will be interesting!
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(…) Holes in the sea ice “as big as Switzerland” have started to appear for the first time since the mid 1970s. (…)
These are ‘hot springs’ or ‘mini-volcanoes’ that appear beneath the Atlantic, Pacific, or polar waters. The burning of the incandescent iron mass explodes wherever it can or will. Thus, the ice melts!
– voir:
https://joannenova.com.au/2017/12/do-40000-volcanoes-matter/#more-56139https://huemaurice5.blogspot.com/2017/12/est-ce-que-40-000-volcans-sont.html
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Not far from the southern pole,
Melting sea ice has left a great hole,
A polar opposite trend,
To what alarmists portend,
By their climate-change rigamarole.
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Posted Rauri. Thanks!
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Any actual temperature measurement below the melting ice?
Thought so. The ‘ice melts by warmer water underneath’ is pure conjecture.
Last measures I know of were -1.2C, the lowest seawater can get.
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The graph I posted shows Salinity and Temperature. The Argo buoys measured it (as well as anything can be measured with one buoy per 250,000km3.)
The water is warmer and saltier after 2015.
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Yes, but those are measurements in open water and comparing the timing of the red hot anomalies with the ice cover makes little sense. For instance the warmth in 2017 is accompanied by ice cover almost at its peak of 2016; the big dip was in 2018, full year later. when the hot blob was absent.
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The salinity shift happened first. The salt melts ice all by itself. The thermocline breaks down, and the warming comes next. Far from the ice being near a peak, the 2017 warm burst correlates with the extended decline in sea ice.
Eyeball the graph. Pre 2015 it’s fresh and cold. After then it’s consistently saltier and also warmer.
And Ed says “Thanks Jo, so there were actual temperature measurements”. Jo says: “Sure, no problem Ed”.
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“Where is the ice”: that’s the important question.
Some details from the net about the Antarctic plateau:
“Average temperatures can range from -20°C to -60°C (-4°F to -76°F), with the coldest temperatures recorded on Earth found there”.
The big question for me is, what conditions give rise to the deposit and accumulation of new ice.
What conditions create rain, snow or ice blizzards?
Ice fields will only be pushed to the relative warmth, minus 1°C, of the ocean if new ice accumulates overhead.
https://www.joannenova.com.au/2025/07/suddenly-2-million-square-km-of-sea-ice-is-missing-near-antarctica-and-all-the-climate-models-were-wrong/#comment-2857724
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Thanks Jo.
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😀
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Suppose a climate scientist/alarmist notices anything unusual. In that case, it is always unprecedented, evidence of climate armageddon, and caused by human activity, carbon dioxide, or because the planet is one degree warmer than a hundred years ago. Never is there any possibility that it was not seen before because no one looked or recorded it. I suggest waiting a couple of centuries to see if it happens again.
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