[Tim7139]

Guest essay by Jim Steele, Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University

Global warming theory predicts that rising levels of CO2 will gradually warm the air and cause an increasing loss of sea ice. As temperatures rise, ice nearer the equator was predicted to be the first to disappear and over the coming decades ice closer to the poles would be the last to melt. However that is not the reality we are now observing. Antarctic sea ice is mostly located outside the Antarctic Circle (Figure 1) and should be the first to melt due to global warming theory. Yet Antarctic sea ice has been increasing and expanding towards the equator contradicting all the models. As Dr. Laura Landrum from the National Center for Atmospheric Research wrote, “Antarctic sea ice area exhibits significant decreasing annual trends in all six [model] ensemble members from 1950 to 2005, in apparent contrast to observations that suggest a modest ice area increase since 1979.”10 (see Figure 2)
OOPS.

And thus, one of the perils of climate modeling.