THE WATCH

Because the North Pole will be gone soon and Santa will have to trade his sledge in for a jet ski wave runner, we at Skeptic's Corner thought we should record its demise. The recent reports of accelerating ice loss should surely be evident in the historical record over the past few years, so let's watch it melt. The difference column reflects ice loss from previous days measurements which should show the acceleration of ice loss relative to previous years. Since ice left from one season to the next will automatically become multi year ice, the thin ice argument is irrelevant. In other words this years new thin ice that does not melt will be next years thicker multi-year ice . Is that complicated? We will highlight years with largest extent and largest melt daily. To keep this to a manageable size we will only show 7 days but older entries will be archived for your viewing pleasure.


Julian Day 121 (May 1)

------- Extent (km^2)----Difference (km^2)
2003 – 12,851,094…….....…….-22,969
2004 – 12,494,063….....……….-29,531
2005 – 12,696,406….....……….-58,594
2006 – 12,341,250.....………….-107,500
2007 – 12,627,813….….....……-5,937
2008 – 12,877,969…….....…….-37,812
2009 – 13,135,156…….....…….-26,875

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Julian Day 122 (May 2)

------- Extent (km^2)----Difference (km^2)
2003 – 12,804,063….....……….-47,031
2004 – 12,440,156….....……….-53,907
2005 – 12,645,156….....……….-51,250
2006 – 12,239,531….....……….-101,719
2007 – 12,597,031…......………-30,782
2008 – 12,865,156….....……….-12,813
2009 – 13,082,188….....……….-52,926

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Julian Day 123 (May 3)

------- Extent (km^2)----Difference (km^2)
2003 – 12,742,969……..……….-61,094
2004 – 12,385,625……..……….-54,531
2005 – 12,574,063……..……….-71,093
2006 – 12,191,094……..……….-48,437
2007 – 12,550,000……......……-47,031
2008 – 12,852,344………..…….-12,812
2009 – 13,031,875………..…….-50,313

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Julian Day 124 (May 4)

------- Extent (km^2)----Difference (km^2)
2003 – 12,699,844……..……….-43,125
2004 – 12,358,750……..……….-26,875
2005 – 12,524,375……..……….-49,688
2006 – 12,092,031……..……….-99,063
2007 – 12,489,375………………-60,625
2008 – 12,802,969………..…….-49,375
2009 – 13,012,500………..…….-19,375

Thanks to TS for providing this information on a daily basis. You can see his post with graphs on this as well as other weather subjects here. All data taken from JAXA


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