NASA images show thinning Arctic sea ice
Arctic sea ice is not only shrinking in coverage area; it's also thinning, according to a report and satellite images jointly released on Monday by NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado.
The Arctic basin is covered in a thick semipermanent sea ice, which is covered in thin seasonal ice caps that are built up each winter, only to melt away again each summer.
The 2009 Arctic summer-melting season is starting out with a substantial amount of thin seasonal ice and an unusually small amount of the thick sea ice, making it more vulnerable to melting, according to the NSIDC's report.
"Thin seasonal ice--ice that melts and refreezes every year--makes up about 70 percent of the Arctic sea ice in wintertime, up from 40 (percent) to 50 percent in the 1980s and 1990s. Thicker ice, which survives two or more years, now comprises just 10 percent of wintertime ice cover, down from 30 (percent) to 40 percent," according to the report from the University of Colorado team led by Charles Fowler.
At left, median image of sea ice thickness at the end of each February cycle. On right, the sea ice thickness for 2009.
(Credit: Chuck Fowler and Jim Maslanik, University of Colorado/NSIDC)The findings should not be entirely surprising to those who have been following NASA and the NSIDC's research. In September 2008, the groups issued a joint report that the Arctic's thick permanent ice was at one of the lowest levels on record, in terms of coverage area.
A team led by Ron Kwok of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is further examining sea ice data to determine if there's a correlation between the reduction in sea ice coverage area and the changes in thickness and volume.
"Sea ice thickness has been hard to measure directly, so scientists have typically used estimates of ice age to approximate its thickness. But last year, a team of researchers led by Ron Kwok of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., produced the first map of sea ice thickness over the entire Arctic basin," according to NASA's report.
Kwok's team is using data from NASA's IceSat (Ice, cloud, and land elevation satellite) to measure Arctic sea ice thickness and volume for 2003 to 2008, to see if there's is a correlation between sea ice coverage area and volume.
So far, the team has reached the same conclusion as Fowler's group.
"The older, thicker sea ice is declining and is being replaced with newer, thinner ice that is more vulnerable to summer melt," Kwok said in a statement.
"With these new data on both the area and thickness of Arctic sea ice, we will be able to better understand the sensitivity and vulnerability of the ice cover to changes in climate," he said.
Images chronicling the change in sea ice coverage area in the Arctic from NASA's QuikScat satellite taken each January 1 since 1999. NASA noticed a 40 percent decrease between 2005 and 2007. Now Kwok's team is looking at thickness and volume.
(Credit: Ron Kwok, NASA/JPL)
In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. E-mail her at candacelombardi@gmail.com. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET. 
Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- A glitch in satellite sensors caused scientists to underestimate the extent of Arctic sea ice by 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles), a California- size area, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said.
Anyone with even rudimentary knowledge of astrophysics or geophysics will explain to you that the earth's rotation about it's axis is not perfect. No planet's is. Therefor, as we spin about our axis, the planet tends to "wobble" and have an increase or decrease in the angle that our axis is at in relation to the sun.
We're currently in a phase where the angle is decreasing (if you consider an angle between the equator and the north pole acute towards the sun negative, and that angel obtuse to the sun as positive). what this translates in lay-mans terms is the northern hemisphere is tilting more and more TOWARDS the sun, increasing the overall amount of solar radiation, such as light and heat, that the northern hemisphere absorbs. This translates to, *gasp*, less ice!
Now I'm sure you're familiar with the doomsday theories etc surrounding 2012 because of the Mayan calendars... the Mayan's saw what any astrologist has observed - that "tilting" will peak around 2012, and the earth's tilt will start reversing, meaning the southern hemisphere will start getting more and more light and the northern less and less. This will translate to "global cooling" for a few decades.
This has been "How not to sound like an eco-****" with your host, me. Enjoy.
Fun fact: the worst impact humans had on the environment was when we used synthetic chemicals that hurt the ozone layer over Antarctica. Greenhouse gasses, while they may have a LOCAL affect on the ecology of a region, do not affect the overall global climate in any notable way. Volcanoes and natural forest fires produce 85-95%, depending on the source you cite, of greenhouse gasses on the planet.
Think about it, with your brain that is. The Earth's climate is cyclical, and we've just come out of a warming trend for a last 10 years, so of course there will be more new ice less than a few years old.
Obviously the rocket scientist are too stupid to understand their own science or they are pandering to the political winds. You be the judge.
My guess is the latter.
BTW, you do know what NASA stands for?
By the way, people who study this stuff scientifically are called astronomers, not astrologists. Sheesh.
some of this really scary ! e heat the earths heating up !
Jerry
That is known as slander. I find your attack on him cowardly since you fail to offer any proof.
Have you been listening to too much of that drug-addled gasbag Rush Limbaugh? Just wondering.
Try rational thought it does wonders for your perception of reality.
Take care
You wouldn't believe in climate change if you lived at sea level and your house ended up under the rising sea level.
What good is a head if you keep it stuck in the sand?
"? Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) around the world since 1880, much of this in recent decades, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
? The rate of warming is increasing. The 20th century's last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia, according to a number of climate studies. And the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that 11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850. "
How exactly does anyone propose to stop the warming of the earth? The only true source of heat on this earth is the sun. Even if we were able to go to a zero emissions planet (no burning of any kind) we still gain heat from the sun....and entropy rolls on.
So, for those that are scared about the melting ice....should we throw some liquid nitrogen into the ocean? That would certainly kill a bunch of ecosystems. How else could we cool the water down? Remember, the motor of a big air conditioner puts out more heat than the air conditioner will remove from the system.
And, perhaps I don't quite understand....how does CO2 wreck the planet? By increasing temperature? How does it do that? CO2 is a chemical and by itself, does not produce heat. If you mean that the more CO2, the less volume of regular air (Nitrogen and oxygen) is available, you might be on to something, but CO2 does not create heat. CO2 usually carries, for a time, the temperature that itself was expelled at (your breath, for example, at 98.6 degrees F). But once outside of the expelling body, CO2 is just as succeptible to losing it's temperature as any other compound. Perhaps, since it is a small compound, it heats up quicker in the sunlight? Again, the sun is the source of the heat.
One final thought....historically, we are in between the 3rd and 4th major ice ages. Can't get to #3 or #4 without getting out of #1 and #2 first. And those happened long before the Industrial Revolution. If Global Warming were man made (I will cede the point here, the wordage and implications of it are man made, but I am talking about the condition that the wordage tries to convey) then we would still be stuck in the middle of the 1st major ice age. All those gulfs and valleys that shaped most of our countryside would still be covered in glaciers, from Canada down to the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri and Arkansas, rendering much of this continent inhabitable.
For the TLDR:
CO2 in and of itself doesn't produce heat, but it transfers heat slower than other gasses in the atmosphere.
Recently there as been much evidence (more than there has been to support global warming) supporting that the world is beginning to go into a cooling trend. Somehow the mainstream media must have accidentally looked over this, yeh that must be it. I personally do not even believe that we are having global cooling yet because of the lack of evidence, which should point out to you the amount of evidence we had towards global warming. Not a lot. I am in no way saying that there is no problem. What I am saying is that we should put more resources into research about the issue before we panic.
Boy would we look stupid if a certain President decides to base our whole economy on technology like impractical solar or wind power that we might not even need. Wouldnt it look worse if a certain President decides to tax emissions, crippling a large majority of an already suffering industry? This is just beginning. How about strict higher priced gas guzzler taxes ect aimed at GM who, correct me if I am mistaken, the government is pumping trillions of dollars into? Do they intend to cripple the industry they are trying to save? How does their logic justify this? How do they justify basing so many things on an idea that hasnt even reached the scientific level of theory? How do they justify labeling something FACT solely because it promotes their personal agenda?
"It is the second-smallest amount of coverage since NASA began monitoring the situation in 1979. The Artic's sea ice coverage this September is about 33 percent below average, compared with the record low of 39 percent below average recorded in 2007.
At this time, neither NASA nor the National Snow and Ice Data Center have made suggestions as to the possible cause for the change. A thorough analysis of the data is scheduled to be released the first week of October, according to NASA."
Antartic ice is off the charts right now!
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg
Since there is much more ice in antartica than the artic we are now above the mean.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
So we are actually making ice rather than loosing it worldwide. But of course all the extra ice is from Climate Change not Global Warming, and we are responsible for that.
www.the-green-wind.com
- by craigd999 June 10, 2009 12:09 PM PDT
- This is an clear attempt to turn an old story a new story. 2007 was a local minimum for arctic ice extent and has recovered somewhat in 2008 and 2009. It is therefore not surprising that >2-yr-old ice would be at a minimum two years later, in 2009. It is merely a reflection of what happened 2-years ago. The real story is the advancement in 2009 into historically normal territory.
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