Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[Rumbles of thunder]
[Loud thunder]
Here's the latest from Earth Now...
On September 16th, 2012 the Arctic sea ice shattered its previous low record set in 2007.
This display shows this summer’s record low sea ice extent in white as measured by
satellites using microwave sensors.
The green line marks the September, 2007 sea ice minimum for comparison with the previous
low record.
Land is colored grey. Oceans are shown in dark blue.
This summer, Arctic ice cover shrank to 3.4 million square kilometers, the lowest since
the satellite record began in 1979 and almost one million square kilometers less than the
previous record.
In contrast to 2007, when weather conditions were warmer and perfect for melting ice, the
summer of 2012 was not exceptionally warm.
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the main reason for the loss of sea
ice this year was a combination of a thinner ice sheet plus a large storm in early August
in the Arctic Ocean that helped break up some of the ice.
Historically, the Arctic Ocean has been covered by a thick ice mass that was mostly permanent
and survived summers. Now it’s becoming more of a seasonal ice cover with large areas
melting in summer. A thinner, more seasonal ice cover is not as white and does not reflect
sunlight back to space as well as a permanent ice sheet. Over the past 30 years, sea ice
extent has shown a dramatic decline with a warming Arctic.