According to scientists at the IARC-JAXA International Arctic Research Center in cooperation with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (IARC-JAXA) the arctic sea ice extent for May 1st is at its highest level in more than six years.

For those readers who don’t know what the arctic sea ice extent is (and really, who would), it’s the area of sea ice covering the ocean where sea-ice concentration (SIC) exceeds 15%. More simply, sea ice extent is frozen ocean water.

We’ve made a chart analyzing the number of square kilometers of sea ice extent on May 1st going back to 2003.

And here’s a graph for September 1st (obviously there’s not data for 2009, but there is for 2002).   
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Here’s the IARC-JAXA’s graph for the entire year:

For global warming enthusiasts the numbers may be a bit off-putting, as they might be evidence that the arctic is not in irreversible decline. But the numbers are also evidence that statistics concerning climate change can be very misleading. Are this year’s number’s an aberration, due to an exceptionally cold winter? Possibly. Furthermore, looking at the statistics for Septemeber 1st, it appears as if acrtic sea ice extent IS declining. Which statistic is more telling?

Arctic ice is expanding and it is contracting — making reports of either outcome, in isolation, both accurate and misleading.