Does anyone have a useful explanation why Antarctic Sea Ice is at record levels?

Nasa might have one....

Not sure what you mean by record levels. Antarctic ice tends to increase area in the eastern half during winter but during summer the Antarctic ice in the western area is melting at a faster rate from below due to the warming ocean. Overall Antarctica is loosing ice volume yearly

Antarctic SEA ICE is at record levels. Antarctic ICE MASS is not. See the difference? Antarctic SEA ICE is at record levels because of a number of reasons. Changing currents, growing stratospheric wind speeds due to ozone loss, faster moving glaciers due to greater precipitation inland, etc... Ice mass, however, is decreasing. How can you not know this? If you like data and you like science then why do you continue stating these dumb questions?

Why not look at glaciers worldwide as well? http://www.ibcperu.org/doc/isis/7076.pdf

Why not include both poles? http://nsidc.org/cgi-bin/bist/bist.pl?annot=1&lege...

http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/18383638/1671623978/n...

http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhil...

http://bprc.osu.edu/rsl/IST/documents/ThomasetalGR...

http://ess.uci.edu/researchgrp/velicogna/files/inc...

Ian: Wow you can't really be that stupid can you? They take one year, the year of greatest sea ice extent, and plug it in. Sea ice is variable throughout the year. Taking it and comparing it to this years sea ice extent doesn't tell you anything besides the sea ice extent at this point in this year is larger than it was during that year. Ice extent growing and shrinking is taken on a YEARLY average not one day to the next. Therefor comparing the two years tells you absolutely nothing about if one is a new record or not. you have to compare it to all the years to see that.

Partly because of decreasing Antarctic *land* ice.

Antarctic sea ice is affected by the weather patterns around Antarctica (I don't recall what those are doing because of global warming), the salinity of the water (which will be reduced by melting land ice), and the temperature of the water (which will *also* be reduced by melting land ice). So increased Antarctic sea ice is actually, more or less, a predicted effect of global warming.

Hey Doofus..."Antarctic sea ice is NOT at record levels."

I know the NSIDC hides the graph now because it showed the sea ice extent increasing but you can still find it.

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_im...

And it is at record level.

No surprise that fellow alarmists give thumbs up to a factually false statement.

Alarmists: "Facts? We don't need no stinkin' facts?

The ozone level is at it's highest this year since the last thirty years.

Sorry make that the ozone hole is the smallest.

and although as pointed out it might not be record MASS but it is record EXTENT and that means a big increase in albedo.

Antarctic sea ice is NOT at record levels. Which may be way your "question" provides no proof of that.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012...

Ice is the bullshit of Global Warming....

...it just naturally follows that it would be piling up.