Environment & Energy

hatrack

(59,592 posts) Tue Mar 29, 2016, 08:18 AM Mar 2016

Arctic Sea Ice Seasonal Maximum Lowest Ever Recorded

A record expanse of Arctic sea never froze over this winter and remained open water as a season of freakishly high temperatures produced deep – and likely irreversible – changes on the far north. Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre said on Monday that the sea ice cover attained an average maximum extent of 14.52m sq km (5.607m sq miles) on 24 March, the lowest winter maximum since records began in 1979.

The low beats a record set only last year of 14.54m sq km (5.612m sq miles), reached on 25 February 2015. “I’ve never seen such a warm, crazy winter in the Arctic,” said NSIDC director Mark Serreze. “The heat was relentless.”

It was the third straight month of record lows in the sea ice cover, after extreme temperatures in January and February stunned scientists.

The winter months of utter darkness and extreme cold are typically the time of maximum growth in the ice cap, until it begins its seasonal decline in spring. With the ice cover down to 14.54m sq km, scientists now believe the Arctic is locked onto a course of continually shrinking sea ice – and that is before the 2016 melt season gets underway.

EDIT

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/28/arctic-sea-ice-record-low-winter

4 replies

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Highlight:

Arctic Sea Ice Seasonal Maximum Lowest Ever Recorded (Original Post) hatrack Mar 2016 OP

Why is it Delphinus Mar 2016 #1

CNN, BBC, Scientific American all have reports on it OnlinePoker Mar 2016 #2

The US Navy called it three years ago NickB79 Mar 2016 #3

I seriously doubt we will see an ice free arctic this summer LouisvilleDem Mar 2016 #4

Delphinus

(11,840 posts)

1. Why is it

Reply to hatrack (Original post)

Tue Mar 29, 2016, 11:53 AM

Mar 2016

The Guardian is the only one reporting these things?

OnlinePoker

(5,725 posts)

2. CNN, BBC, Scientific American all have reports on it

Reply to Delphinus (Reply #1)

Tue Mar 29, 2016, 01:27 PM

Mar 2016

I posted about it yesterday when NSIDC made their update.

NickB79

(19,257 posts)

3. The US Navy called it three years ago

Reply to hatrack (Original post)

Tue Mar 29, 2016, 02:46 PM

Mar 2016

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/dec/09/us-navy-arctic-sea-ice-2016-melt

An ongoing US Department of Energy-backed research project led by a US Navy scientist predicts that the Arctic could lose its summer sea ice cover as early as 2016 - 84 years ahead of conventional model projections.

The project, based out of the US Naval Postgraduate School's Department of Oceanography, uses complex modelling techniques that make its projections more accurate than others.

A paper by principal investigator Professor Wieslaw Maslowski in the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences sets out some of the findings so far of the research project:

"Given the estimated trend and the volume estimate for October–November of 2007 at less than 9,000 km3, one can project that at this rate it would take only 9 more years or until 2016 ± 3 years to reach a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer. Regardless of high uncertainty associated with such an estimate, it does provide a lower bound of the time range for projections of seasonal sea ice cover."

LouisvilleDem

(303 posts)

4. I seriously doubt we will see an ice free arctic this summer

Reply to NickB79 (Reply #3)

Thu Mar 31, 2016, 07:03 PM

Mar 2016

So far it doesn't look any different than previous years where we bottomed out at ~4m km2

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