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Originally Posted by Jonrox
why does ice pack shrinkage equal warm (every article I read states it does)? If colder temperatures don't mean more ice freezes, why do warmer temperatures mean more ice melts?
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It could be lots of reasons. It could be warmer on most of the planet, but this may cause a change in weather patterns elsewhere (read: Antaractica), with localized colder temperatures. An example is last winter. It was quite cold, and Europe saw remarkable snow fall, and people suggested that this was evidence that climate change was wrong. But a number of models suggested the opposite. They indicate that SOOO much arctic ice has melted that it has kick started convective cooling in the Atlantic, and that we're in for a few more cool years before before warming picks up again.
At the end of the day, there are a lot of variables involved, and scientists are just trying to understand them as best as they can. You can always find outliers, or faults in any data set, but that doesn't mean you throw the whole hypothesis out. You make the best conclusions you can from the data and then you design new experiments to explain the exceptions.