Ice between Canada and SW Greenland: highest level in 15 years.

As yet another indicator of the impact January 2008 has had on the Northern Hemisphere, we find this story from Greenland’s Sermitsiaq News:

Minus 30 degrees Celsius. That’s how cold it’s been in large parts of western Greenland where the population has been bundling up in hats and scarves. At the same time, Denmark’s Meteorological Institute states that the ice between Canada and southwest Greenland right now has reached its greatest extent in 15 years.

‘Satellite pictures show that the ice expansion has extended farther south this year. In fact, it’s a bit past the Nuuk area. We have to go back 15 years to find ice expansion so far south. On the eastern coast it hasn’t been colder than normal, but there has been a good amount of snow.’

And on the front page, a story about that other “indicator of climate”, the polar bear:

More polar bears seen at Sisimiut

Apparently, they don’t have the same affinity for them as some others do.

Finally we have this latest Arctic sea ice graph from Cryosphere Today:

The blue line (which I added) shows that Arctic sea ice peaked just a bit above last years peak, at 13.5 million square kilometers. The anomaly graph below the main graph, also shows a large anomaly than last year.

It will be interesting to see how long it holds and if we see a gain or loss next year.