
Summer Sea Ice Could End This Decade: The Voyage to the End of Ice - pseudolus
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-voyage-to-the-end-of-ice-20200116/
======
jonahrd
Please change the title back to the original: "The Voyage to the End of Ice"

The article is clear in stating that prediction is difficult and ranges from
10 years to 200. Putting the lower end of that claim in the title is
clickbait-y

~~~
SimeVidas
Clickbait means misleading and sensationalized. That title seems like an apt
description and not clickbait.

~~~
crystaldev
Are there betting markets for this sort of stuff? Because I'd like to bet that
in ten years there will be summer sea ice.

~~~
SimeVidas
Alright, I take my comment back. I checked in National Geographic. If we don’t
make drastic changes, summer sea ice is projected to end after 2060 [1],
although it is always possible that things spiral out of control in unexpected
ways.

[1]:
[https://twitter.com/simevidas/status/959464878410010625](https://twitter.com/simevidas/status/959464878410010625)

------
trentnix
Summer Sea Ice could end this decade, and the glaciers in Glacier National
Park will be gone by 2020, too.

[https://nypost.com/2020/01/10/the-telling-tale-of-glacier-
na...](https://nypost.com/2020/01/10/the-telling-tale-of-glacier-national-
parks-gone-by-2020-signs/)

~~~
elfexec
I wish we had a centralized archive for all of these predictions gone wrong.

~~~
trentnix
I'm sure this isn't all of them, but it's a good start.

[https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-
pocalyp...](https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic-
predictions)

------
Merrill
For data, see Figures 3a and 3b of
[http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2019/10/](http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2019/10/)

The long term trend is decrease of 12.9% per decade. The steepest decline over
13 years is 1999 to 2012. There has been little decline over the 13 years 2007
to 2019.

------
macinjosh
At this point I'll believe it when I see it. I am not saying climate change
isn't happening but predictions like this are not useful.

This exact same prediction was made in 2007. These sorts of predictions are no
better than what a fortune teller can offer.

[1]: [https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2009/sep...](https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2009/sep/02/john-kerry/kerry-claims-arctic-will-be-ice-
free-2013/)

[2]: [https://imgur.com/9NMaTcZ](https://imgur.com/9NMaTcZ)

~~~
noiv
Since 2007 a handful more of sea ice observing satellites has been launched
into orbit, hundreds if not thousands papers about sea ice have been published
and sea ice models have been improved significantly - all telling the same
thing: sea ice decline is happening.

It's a good thing science makes progress every day, just start listening.

~~~
soperj
It's funny that you pick 2007. This is from Nsidc -->
[http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/1999/10/Sep_monthly_...](http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/1999/10/Sep_monthly_extents13yr.png)

It's been flat since 2007 in the arctic. Sea Ice in the Antarctic has actually
had a record high in that time period.

~~~
acqq
If observing just the plot of "each September in each year" one still misses
the whole picture which is (all extents through the time, not only Septembers:

[http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/1999/10/Figure3.png](http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/1999/10/Figure3.png)

Specifically, 2012 was such an extreme year that the following years seldom
compete with it, but they still do, and the trend to decrease is still
obvious.

~~~
soperj
2012 is an outlier, and the data should just be discarded. The only reason it
was as low as it was because a massive cyclone came through in August.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Arctic_Cyclone_of_2012](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Arctic_Cyclone_of_2012)

~~~
noiv
2012 wasn't bad measurement, it was actually visible from space. Also,
cyclones in the Arctic is nothing special, 2012 was hefty, because the ice was
already very thin and the ocean absorbed a lot of heat.

~~~
soperj
I didn't say it was. I said it was an outlier. Cyclones in the summer are
rare. It was also a major reason that the sea ice extent got as low as it did,
and it's never got even close to that low again. It's not relevant to the long
term or short term trend.

~~~
acqq
> it's never got even close to that low again.

Actually, in 2019 and 2020 at more dates the sea extent was under that of the
same dates in 2012, except for the extreme points in September:

2020:

[https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_iq...](https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_iqr_timeseries.png)

2019: see July:
[http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/1999/10/Figure3.png](http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/1999/10/Figure3.png)

~~~
soperj
The storm hit in August. You're ignoring the point, and just being pedantic.

------
WhompingWindows
Are there ways other than ice to increase the albedo of our North/South poles?
How do we keep those regions from warming?

