Total Arctic Ice Loss In 2007 Beyond Historic Minimum Equal In Size To 6 Californias - NYT

[hatrack]

FAIRBANKS, Alaska, Sept. 20 — The cap of floating sea ice on the Arctic Ocean, which retreats under summer’s warmth, this year shrank more than one million square miles — or six Californias — below the average minimum area reached in recent decades, scientists reported Thursday. The minimum ice area for this year, 1.59 million square miles, appeared to be reached Sunday. The ice is now spreading again under the influence of the deep Arctic chill that settles in as the sun drops below the horizon at the North Pole for six months, starting Friday.

The findings were reported by the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., and posted online at www.nsidc.org.

While satellite tracking of polar sea ice has been done only since 1979, several ice experts who have studied Russian and Alaskan records going back many decades said the ice retreat this year was probably unmatched in the 20th century, including during a warm period in the 1930s. “I do not think that there was anything like we observe today” in the 1930s or 1940s, said Igor Polyakov, an ice expert at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

The ice retreat has been particularly striking this year. The Alaskan side of the Arctic Ocean has stretches of thousands of square miles of open water; the fabled Northwest Passage through the islands of northern Canada was free of ice for weeks; and the sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans north of Russia was nearly clear a week ago, with one small clot of ice around a group of Siberian islands. Mark Serreze, a senior researcher at the snow and ice center, said it was increasingly clear that climate change from the buildup of greenhouse gases was playing a role in the Arctic warming, which is seen not only in the floating ice but also in melting terrestrial ice sheets, thawing tundra and warming seawater.

EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/science/21arctic.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1190394897-F7rI1wjwFnx+ocflRXa5ug

[hatrack]

1. Oh, sorry, forgot to mention:

The loss in size below the record minimum in 2005 was equal in size to just one California, plus Texas.

[XemaSab]

3. And how many Rhode Islands was it?

:shrug:

:P

[tom_paine]

4. Seems like all the red lights on the dashboard are flashing at the same time

Environmental. Sociological. Economic. Political. Constitutional. Etc.

Have they ever ALL flashed red at the same time, as they are now? By virtue of the unprecedented nature of the Global Warming Crisis and other environmental crises, I wonder howthat could be true.

At the other times in history when all the dashboard lights flashed red warnings, so to speak, like in 450 AD or 1933, to name two, it usually signified some undetermined length of bad times where evil would reign and death would hold high carnvial for a signifcant number of humans inhabiting the Earth.

As in...the Dark Ages, which lasted really 1000 years and didn't fully end until the last Salem Witches burned down to embers, and maybe later. Or DubyaDubyaTwo, the First Bushie trying to take over the world and kill the Liberals, in which evil reigned for 12 years and was defeated by a combined global alliance which is unlikely to arise today against our Current Bushie Tyrant.

What will happen, now that all THOSE dashboard lights are signalling red warnings PLUS the environment, what calamity is coming and how long will it last?

[AlecBGreen]

2. yeah

pretty amazing. The 2007 low CRUSHED the previous recent low in 2005 by 25%. Overall, 2007 ice coverage was 40% below average (1979 - 2007).