{"id":3322,"date":"2008-04-03T07:49:40","date_gmt":"2008-04-03T07:49:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/2008\/04\/update-arctic-ice\/"},"modified":"2008-04-03T07:49:40","modified_gmt":"2008-04-03T07:49:40","slug":"update-arctic-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/2008\/04\/update-arctic-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"Update: Arctic Ice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When the observed Arctic ice cover hit a record low last summer, <a href=https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/2007\/09\/how-fast-is-the-arctic-melting\/>I reviewed the last 20 years or so of ice coverage data<\/a>, which showed a clear long(ish)-term decrease in both winter and summer ice cover, and concluded:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>At this stage, then, it is difficult to know if this year&#8217;s record low represents an acceleration of the long-term shrinkage of Arctic sea-ice, or is merely part of the variability in a fairly dynamic system (as witnessed by the large changes in coverage over the annual cycle). Only time will tell: the figures for this winter could be very interesting.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, here is the coverage map for last month, courtesy of the <a href=http:\/\/nsidc.org\/data\/seaice_index\/>National Snow and Ice Data Center<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=a href=http:\/\/nsidc.org\/data\/seaice_index\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"N_200803_extn.png\" src=\"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/N_200803_extn.png\" width=\"420\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>At first glance then, all that extra open ocean observed last September has made very little difference to the winter coverage; Arctic sea ice actually has a slightly greater extent than it did in March 2007 (15.2 million square km, as opposed to 14.7 million last year). But this year, a much greater proportion of the ice sheet consists of newly formed ice, which is much thinner, and more vulnerable to summer melting, than thicker &#8216;perennial&#8217; ice that has survived and grown over a few seasonal cycles. If we could measure ice volume rather than ice area, I suspect the story would be different &#8211; and more worrying. <a href=http:\/\/gristmill.grist.org\/story\/2008\/3\/20\/124455\/687>Others seem to agree<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the observed Arctic ice cover hit a record low last summer, I reviewed the last 20 years or so of ice coverage data, which showed a clear long(ish)-term decrease in both winter and summer ice cover, and concluded: At &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/2008\/04\/update-arctic-ice\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}