By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM

UPDATE 4/17/09
The IARC-JAXA AMSR-E ice extent daily data for the 16th of April is now the highest in the record going back to 2003, just beating out 2003.


See larger image here.

The sun remains in a deep slumber.

Today we are 15 days into April without a sunspot and with 603 sunspotless day this cycle minimum, 92 already this year.  2009 at this rate, is likely to enter the top 10 years the last century along with 2007 (9th) and 2008 (2nd) this summer.

See larger image here.

If it stays quiet the rest of this month, the minimum can be no earlier than November 2008, at least a 12.5 year cycle length. I believe January 2009 is a better shot to be the solar minimum as sunspot number would have to be below 0.5 in June 2008 to prevent the running mean (13 month) from blipping up then. April needs only to stay below 3.2 and May 3.4 to get us to January. This would be very like cycles 1 to 4 in the late 1700s and early 1800s, preceding the Dalton Minimum. That was a cold era, the age of Dickens and the children playing in the snow in London, much like this past winter.

See larger image here.

THE ARCTIC AND ANTARCTIC ICE STORY

As for the ice, we hear in the media the hype about the arctic and Antarctic ice. The arctic ice we are told is more first and second year ice and very vulnerable to a summer melt.

See larger image here.

Actually the arctic ice is the highest level since 2002 according to IARC-JAXA. The anomaly is a relatively small 250,000 square km according to NSIDC.

There was much attention paid in the media to the crack in the Wilkins Ice sheet bridge. It was not even reflected as a blip on the Southern Hemisphere ice extent, which has grown rapidly as the southern hemisphere winter set in to 1,250,000 square kms (as of 4/18) above the normal for this date and rising rapidly.

See larger image here.

The net GLOBAL sea ice anomaly is also positive, 850,000 square km above the normal. See full PDF here. See in this Watts Up With That post how the media and NSIDC recyclced stories and photos from 2008 in their 2009 Wilkins stories.