I’ve been googling to find info on the Polar cap ice. Surely, it must be expanding with all this cold weather.
I type in polar ice 2018 and get info mainly about it melting. Even though I type in January, 2018, I get propaganda about climate change and all the usual suspects dating back a few years. Anyone else having the same problem. Google is getting more and more like Orwellian Ingsoc, or Newspeak.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
The sea ice is low, but think of it this way. All those dips of the jet stream bringing arctic air south are made up by sucking warm air from the south into the arctic. That heat pretty much get transfered directly to space. In addition ice is a pretty good insulator that prevents heat from the ocean (water has about 1000 times the heat capacity of air). With the ice gone, terra joules of energy can transfer directly from the ocean to space. When people understand that the amount of energy contained in the atmosphere is teeny tiny compared to the amount of energy in the ocean, and that 100% of the energy in the ocean comes directly from sunlight, and that while the ocean has an enormous effect upon the atmosphere, and is the driver of almost all weather, the reverse is not true...infrared radiation from the atmosphere does not penetrate the ocean surface and air does not transfer heat to the ocean. The only effect of warmer air on the ocean is that it may cause higher evaporation, combined with convection transports even more heat to the upper atmosphere then to space. All of this removes heat from the system and thus cools it.