Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice - Two Cool Interactive Charts

The cool thing that I see is that it all goes back to be the same in the winter time (thats on your graph and year selection). Almost all years are within the standard deviation besides year 2012.

Here is the same graph for the Antarctis.

I guess we just found out that there is a natural variability.

If you click on the link that interactive graph allows you to view Antarctica as well. It's a bottom at the top left that lets you toggle between the arctic and antarctic.

Guess that's what I did!

Now you are guessing!

FYI - You'll often see the 2 standard deviation shading on charts like these. What exactly does it mean? It assumes that if the year to year fluctuations were random, the percentage chance of having a year in a particular zone would be the following:

Within 2 standard deviations higher than the average = 47.72% chance (roughly once every 2.1 years)

Within 2 standard deviations lower than the average = 47.72% chance (roughly once every 2.1 years)

Larger than 2 standard deviations higher than the average = 2.3% chance (roughly once every 43.5 years)

Larger than 2 standard deviations lower than the average = 2.3% chance (roughly once every 43.5 years)

fun chart, wish the data went back centuries but satellites began tracking these types of events only since the 1970's.

All joking aside, NASA made an elegant graphic to present a vast amount of data in a form that is easy to comprehend. I particularly like the average and standard deviation bar for a fixed three decades being available to place on the graph. By adding one year or another one can now see for themselves how each year contributes to the average and how far from the norm is each year.

I see the arctic ice has recovered since 2012, and the antarctic has more too. Too bad it didn't have 2015 data. Is there a way to check spelling with the new editor?

It seemed to have a pretty abrupt swing on the recovery. It could go the other way also.

yes, and we may not be part of the next cycle, no matter how much carbon credits we own.

yes spell check is now a right click away. Try it!