How is it misleading when they're talking about "exposing more open ocean to incoming solar radiation and heating" specifically? How is it misleading at all when I've literally just quoted data from a really good site?
Presenting a very slightly increasing average antarctic coverage trend over specifically 40 years as a refutation that antarctic polar ice is in retreat is misleading for a couple reasons. First, the last ten years appears to show strongly decreasing coverage trend which shows variability or a change in trend to integrate into any conclusions. Second, over that whole period the minimum coverage has a clear decreasing trend, again that should inform any expectations about where we are going.
Are you staking out a claim that antarctic ice is going to increase over the next few decades?
We've had a year with the highest extent ever recorded in the last 10 years.
It's a direct refutation of the authors point that it'll continue to decrease and expose more ocean because of compounding effects when it hasn't actually been decreasing. I make no claims that it's going to increase or decrease, I'm not even talking about the future, I'm refuting the author's bad data.
Because while the winter maximum used to increase (5y average) in the last 40 years, the summer maximum decreased (5y average) over the same period.
> How is it misleading when they're talking about "exposing more open ocean to incoming solar radiation and heating" specifically?
So, if you don't know, during winter there is almost no sun in antartica (and even in the areas you can see it 3 hours a day like in the Kerguelen, it isnt absorbed that much to to a low angle of incidence). So we clearly don't care about random averages of the sea ice over a year, but its state when the sun hit the water, in summer (because the angle of incidence is higher, and also, the sun almost never sets there).
That's why your data is correct, but misleading. What's important isn't the ice sheet surface this winter, during june-july-august-september (sorry to over-explain, but i get that this is a complex issue and this bear repeating) but how much ice was present last summer (this winter if you're in the north hemisphere). And this was the lowest we ever had.
Do you want more clarifications on specific points? I'm not an expert, and this is a complex subject
> Because while the winter maximum used to increase (5y average) in the last 40 years, the summer maximum decreased (5y average) over the same period.
March extent has neither decreased, nor increased. It hasn't been decreasing at all. The largest extent in march has occurred in the years 2008, 2013, 2014 and 2015.
