Extreme freeze, thaw at poles stymies experts

A recent report stated that Antarctic sea ice covered its largest area recorded since satellite mapping began in 1979. The new record is 19.44 million square kilometers as of Oct. 6. The September 2012 monthly average of Antarctic sea ice was likewise a record at 19.39 million square kilometers.

The record sea icepack in Antarctica was a big contrast from this year’s record summer melt of sea ice in the Arctic.

Rob Massom of the Australian Antarctic Research Center in Hobart, said this week:

“The message is that there is a lot of work to be done in order to better understand what exact processes climatewise are taking place around Antarctica. We need to know the role of these processes that affect sea ice expansion and retraction.”

Massom went on to say that “the most authoritative climate change models recently predicted as much as a 30 percent loss of Antarctic sea ice by the end of this century and certainly did not predict the current rapid expansion.”

When it comes to predicting major climate changes, Massom said, we must realize that the Earth’s weather is “a very complex system. The 2002 break up of the Larsen Ice Shelf in northwestern Antarctica was a reminder that there are rapid changes occurring in certain regions of the continent.”

Massom also said that one possible explanation of the notable increase in sea ice in Antarctica was “the changing patterns globally of large-scale atmospheric circulations, especially near the poles.”

This could explain why the retreat of the Arctic ice, by extreme contrast with Antarctica, has been happening much faster than climate scientists predicted would be the case a decade ago. Massom said, however, that “there is no connection between the shrinking of ice in the Arctic with the expansion of sea ice in Antarctica.”

There’s no doubt that we keep experiencing wide weather extremes. In early October, we saw record low temperatures in nearly 500 locations north of Interstate 70 in the U.S. The snows in parts of North Dakota and Minnesota were the heaviest for so early in the fall season since the same period in 1950.

In terms of our local weather, we’ve been seeing rain and even snow showers fall across the Inland Northwest since our big weather change in mid-October. It looks like we’ll have more showers with snow in the higher mountains over the next several weeks.