"Global Warming" - Antarctic sea ice keeps setting new record-high levels – Scientists puzzled.

"Global Warming" - Antarctic sea ice keeps setting new record-high levels – Scientists puzzled.HT: IceAgeNow.

Ice covers an area almost twice as large as Europe. Didn’t get the memo that is was supposed to melt.

17 Oct 13 – Sea ice of Antarctica has expanded this year to a record, reaching 19.7 million square kilometers, according to sea ice physicist Marcel Nicolaus and Stefan Hendricks from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven.
That’s almost twice the area of Europe. In 2012 maximum sea ice extent in Antarctica stood at 18.9 million square kilometers.

“There is in Antarctica as much sea ice in a long time – if it has ever been since the start of satellite observations ever so much sea ice,” says Marcel Nicolaus. 

Why the sea ice in Antarctica despite progressing global warming grows instead of shrinks is a mystery: “Frankly, we do not know mostly why the ice is increasing,” says Nicholas.(It's The SUN!!!)

Is the ice only larger or thicker?

Whether the sea ice around Antarctica is not only larger but also thicker, there is as yet only circumstantial evidence. In two expeditions with the research vessel Polarstern in recent months, the scientists found thick, compact ice in the Weddell Sea. In contrast to the Arctic, satellites cannot measure the thickness of ice in the Southern Ocean because the overlying snow is too thick. (“Thick, compact ice” is circumstantial?)
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/antarktis-packeis-erreicht-rekordstand-1.1796730

“Antarctic Sea Ice didn’t get the memo it was supposed to melt,”

reads the headline on WUWT.com.

Antarctic Ice Sets New All Time Record In October

By Paul Homewood.
NSIDC are now back up and running again, after the Federal shutdown.
Quite astonishingly, Antarctic sea ice has set another record for maximum extent, beating the previous record of 19.513 million sq km, set on 21st September this year.

last Ice age Map.

What makes the new record so astonishing is that it was set in October, on the 1st. Climatologically, the maximum extent is reached on 22nd September, so it is most unusual for the ice still to be growing 10 days later.

As at the 18th October, extent is still running at 998,000 sq km above normal.
With the Arctic ice running at 728,000sq km below normal, this means that global sea ice is 270,000 sq km above the 1981-2010 norm.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/archives.html
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/index.html

http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/antarctic-ice-sets-new-all-time-record-in-october/

Per the graph above, Antarctic Sea Ice Extent has remained above the 1981 – 2010 “normal” range for much of the last three months and the current positive Antarctic Sea Ice Extent anomaly appears quite large for a planet supposedly on the verge of Dangerous Warming.
At the other pole Arctic Sea Ice Extent has remained within the 1981 – 2010 “normal” range for the entirety of 2013;