distribution have an expected value of zero. These are summed and the sums plotted.
The preceding analysis pertains only to the sea ice. There is a good chance that what is happening to the sea ice in each polar region is also occurring for the total ice in the regions. Most of the arctic ice is floating and its melting would not add to the volume of the oceans whereas most of the antarctic ice is resting on land its increase would deduct water from the oceans.
When the evidence is examined in detail one finds that the notion of what is happening to the arctic sea ice being global is preposterous. The fact that the antarctic is not experiencing a decline is sea ice shows that the arctic phenomenon is at most hemispheric. But it is not even hemispheric. As the photos below from NASA indicate the sea ice is declining overwhelmingly just off the north coast of Asia.
There are many special circumstances in Asia that are possible sources of the decline in sea ice off its coast. A disproportionate amount of the global warming has occurred in central Asia in the winter during the night. The summer sea ice happened to be at its maximum in 1979. That was also the time that the economy of China began its extraordinary economic growth. There may have been a decrease in the flow of fresh water from the rivers of Siberia. Fresh, nonsaline water is more easily frozen than the saline water of the ocean. Focusing the search for an explanation in terms of northeast Asian phenomena is more likely to be successful than a search in terms of global hydrocarbon use including the southern hemisphere as well as the nothern.
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