Thanks for the data, Larry!
You're welcome.
To reiterate: Some good news regarding what had been a record warm (since at least 1958) 6 month period as a whole (Sept. of 2016 through Feb. of 2017):
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
If you click on the year by year graphs, you can clearly see two things:
1. The period 9/1/2016 through 2/28/2017 was easily the warmest of all of the years linked here (back to 1958) assuming this data is accurate. Look at how every single day was warmer than normal and was in many cases much warmer than normal.
(I do have a concern about the inconsistency of the anomalies when going from 12/31 of each year to 1/1 of the subsequent year. A dozen or so years had a rise or fall of 7C+, which bothers me because no other consecutive days throughout the year ever had nearly that much of a change, but I'll assume that isn't enough to call the entire dataset into question).
2. Interestingly enough, however, note that every day of the last month or so has actually been COLDER than normal (as much as 2C colder than normal).
(Keep in mind that anomalies in May through August are almost always much smaller than that for fall through early spring. So, 2C anomalies are actually rather significant in May. 1958-present record cold in May is only ~-4C.)
That's a very impressive cold recovery for Arctic temperatures with regard to normals though it doesn't mean the Arctic has actually been colder for the last 30 days averaged out (~261 K) vs the prior period. Instead, what has happened is that the Arctic has warmed much more slowly than normal. Jan-Feb of 2017 averaged a record warm (back to 1958) near 251-252 K. But the last 30 days have averaged near 261 K, which means a warming of only about 10 K. The average rise 1958-2002 has been nearly double that.
One last statistical item to note, which is related to some of what I said above: notice how regardless of how warm the Arctic has gotten anomalywise in winter, it has always gotten very close to normal by summer. It doesn't seem to matter much how mild the prior winter. Record warm anomalies back to 1958
on just about every summer day are only ~+1C! Anyone can see this by just clicking on every year from 1958-2016. I think that is really neat!
This chart updates daily and is one worth following, especially due to the very important upcoming summer. If it can somehow stay mainly colder than normal for much of the upcoming crucial next 6 weeks or so, that could very well be enough to prevent the peak of the Arctic ice melt season from being as bad as it was looking to be. Fingers are crossed, especially since coastal residents would be in much better shape if Arctic ice, in general, doesn't dwindle as fast since that would mean slower sea level rises overall.
By the way, I consider myself a skeptic of some of the more alarmist predictions rather than an AGW "denier". I believe that the warming has been due to an unknown % from AGW and an unknown % from natural cycles including solar.
