70 Trillion cubic feet of New Arctic Ice

3-transitional images, Jan-2009, Jan-2010, Jan-2011

Comparing imagery of January arctic sea ice from 2009 to 2011 sourced from the U.S. Navy Polar Ice Prediction System, it appears as though the ice sheet has thickened substantially.

Up to 500,000 square miles of the arctic sea region may have thickened from approximately 5 feet thick during January 2009 to approximately 10 feet thick during January 2011.


The ice thickness scale color, dark blue, corresponds to about 1.5 meters, or about 5 feet.

The color green represents about 3 meters, or about 10 feet.

The estimated area that has changed from dark blue to green measures approximately 500,000 square miles based on approximated Google Earth ruler measurements (1,500 miles length by a bit more than 300 miles width, on average – call it 333).

At an increased thickness of 5 feet, that calculates out to be…
500,000 x (5,280 x 5280) x 5 = 69,626,304,000,000

might as well round it to 70,000,000,000,000 cubic feet

It’s getting colder out there!

…which may bring about an entirely new preparedness category
“mini Ice Age”

(actually, we are well within a ‘La Nina’ cycle – cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean surface)


An interesting ‘coincidence’ is that the magnetic north pole drift direction is nearly the same as the increase in ice sheet depth.



disclaimer: no attempts were made to calculate the overall sea ice change (globally, or in the entire northern hemisphere) – the map loop shows slight reduction at southwest Greenland (Labrador Sea), some reduction in Hudson Bay, while some increase at northeast Greenland (Greenland Sea) – possibly an overall neutral effect there. The vast majority of apparent change is in the Arctic Ocean.