And in the Arctic, one-tenth of sea ice is above water surface level and nine-tenths is below.
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Now, sea ice data collected by NASA suggest that the region is not showing signs of significant recovery.
Ten years ago, this year’s sea ice minimum would have set a new record low by a fair amount.
Record-breaking warm temperatures in the first half of 2016 have primed the Arctic for another summer of low sea ice cover, said NASA on Friday. “Now, we’re kind of used to these low levels of sea ice – it’s the new normal”. Instead, this year’s sea ice minimum offers a glimpse of the “new normal”.
“What you really see is the signal we’re seeing now is coming from anthropogenic causes”, said Dr Thomas Wagner, NASA Cryosphere Program Scientist.
Researchers say the last two years of melting show how much sea ice loss is dictated by weather patterns during June and July. And this NASA satellite photograph of the almost ice free Northwest Passage snaking through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago illustrates the Arctic’s “new normal” as climate change continues to transform the region. But the rate of ice loss has accelerated in the first two weeks of August and is now higher than the average for this time of the year. If you don’t, they can slow down any melting momentum you had.
However, statistics gathered by NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center indicate that the melting of sea ice is alreadly “wildly” changing the region. For the Guardian, Vidal points to Wadhams’ new book “A Farewell to Ice”, to be released September 1, as a daring but worthwhile position on the topic of climate change.
Markus and the team will use the ICESat-2 or the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite-2 to get a more complete understanding of the thickness.
“We’re already seeing evidence of that in terms of how the jet stream is changing”, the sea ice scientist told Reuters. This satellite will be launched by 2018. After the concept of the Arctic death spiral emerged, scientists from many agencies have been working to better understand the relationships between Arctic events and the health of the rest of the world.
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“If we want to estimate mass changes of sea ice, or increased melting, we need the sea ice thickness”, said Markus.
