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Subscribe to RSSNew sea ice is finally starting to form again in the Arctic, scientists reported Wednesday, but not before reaching another record low last Sunday.
"We are now in uncharted territory," Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said in a statement announcing the record low of 1.32 million square miles -- nearly half the average extent from 1979 to 2010. The extent has been tracked by satellite since 1979.
"While we’ve long known that as the planet warms up, changes would be seen first and be most pronounced in the Arctic," he added, "few of us were prepared for how rapidly the changes would actually occur."
Many experts expect the Arctic to be free of sea ice in summer at some point between 2015 and 2050.
"Recent climate models suggest that ice-free conditions may happen before 2050," noted center scientist Julienne Stroeve. But she added the caveat that the recent sudden rate of decline "remains faster than many of the models are able to capture."
Serreze told NBC News he's figuring on 2030, calling it "a pretty aggressive estimate."
The sea ice extent numbers come after the center reported last month that the summer sea ice on Aug. 26 had broken the previous record low set in 2007 of 1.61 million square miles. On Aug. 26 the sea ice extent was 1.58 million square miles, it said.
"We're smashing a record that smashed a record," center scientist Walt Meier said.
In the 1980s, he said, summer sea ice would cover an area a bit smaller than the Lower 48 states. Now it is about half that.
A report from the National Snow and Ice Data Center shows the Arctic's melting ice is resulting in the lowest sea ice levels since satellites started tracking the measurements in 1979. NBC's Brian Williams reports.
The difference between this year's low and that of 2007 is 293,000 square miles, about the size of Texas, the center noted in its report.
Meanwhile, conditions favorable to new sea ice are taking longer to appear.
"The strong late season decline is indicative of how thin the ice cover is," Meier said. "Ice has to be quite thin to continue melting away as the sun goes down and fall approaches."
The thickness of the ice is also in decline.
"The core of the ice cap is the perennial ice, which normally survived the summer because it was so thick", Joey Comiso, a NASA scientist who uses satellites to study the ice, said in a statement. "But because it's been thinning year after year, it has now become vulnerable to melt."
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NASA also noted that a strong August storm that formed off Alaska's coast and moved to the center of the Arctic Ocean had an impact on ice levels.
"The storm definitely seems to have played a role in this year's unusually large retreat of the ice", said NASA scientist Claire Parkinson. "But that exact same storm, had it occurred decades ago when the ice was thicker and more extensive, likely wouldn't have had as prominent an impact, because the ice wasn't as vulnerable then as it is now."
This year follows several of declining summer sea ice.
"The six lowest September ice extents have all been in the past six years," Serreze said. "I think that's quite remarkable."
The experts also noted that what happens in the Arctic doesn't stay there.
The warmer Arctic is adding increased heat and moisture into the climate system, said center scientist Ted Scambos. "This will gradually affect climate in the areas where we live," he said. "We have a less polar pole -- and so there will be more variations and extremes."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Gee, how strange, because Antarctic ice has just set an ALL-TIME RECORD HIGH!
Doesn't that suggest GLOBAL COOLING?!
No? Then why does less ice in the arctic (which I doubt, because we've been lied to so often by the AGW crowd so often) suggest the opposite? You can't have it both ways.
No it doesn't suggest global cooling because you are ignorant of simple facts. What is it that you don't understand about the Antarctic also warming? Lets keep things simple so you can understand. If the Antarctic was generally a little bit colder than the year before that would be called cooling. Got it? But that's not happening. Generally the Antarctic is a little bit warmer than the year before. That's called warming. Do you understand? Do you understand that the Antarctic is on a warming trend?
More Antarctic ice could simply mean a greater accumulation of water from global warming. The Antarctic is still cold enough to freeze the new water.
dude please. the antarctic is also setting low temp records. there is no warming trend in the antarctic. none. zip. zero. nada.
Spung please do your research. It's clear you don't understand the concept of arithmetic average. Lets make this clear so that you understand. If the antarctic is setting new temperature highs more than lows, then the antarctic isn't necessarily cooling.
According to NASA's Earth Observatory the Antarctic Peninsula is currently one of the most rapidly warming regions on Earth. Please quit talking about things you know nothing about.
Why do morons always say that the rich only deny it to make more money? Is it only the rich that use gasoline? Do the rest of us not drive, take the bus, heat our homes, cook, etc? I guess Ill just keep on walking in my rags and eating lizards like everyone else who's not super rich.
More hand-wringing from the loony left.
Guess what? At one time the entire surface of the Earth was covered by ice.
The Earth's climate is always changing.
Get over yourselves.
Go talk to the bears!
You mean Polar Bears.
We burn up all our fossil fuels, cause global warming and the arctic to melt, and now the oil companies can make more oil and cause more destruction to our planet. What a vicious circle.
Hey, this is not important, is it? Don't we all agree its more important to drill in the Arctic, dig those tar sands, frack for gas, and ship that coal...I mean, whether the planet burns up is peripheral. What's important is that we have economic growth so we can have more jobs jobs jobs.
Why is the record setting amount of sea ice in the South Pole not reported with the same panicked tone? North Pole lost, South Pole gained.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/09/19/antarctic-sea-ice-sets-another-record/
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2008/0110/p14s01-sten.html/(page)/2
Oh, I forgot, we have a consensus--
A lecture by Michael Crichton
Caltech Michelin Lecture
January 17, 2003
I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.….
Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.
Thank God the climate is changing, as it has forever. Otherwise I would be really scared. But this eco-alarmist crap has to end. The Romans grew grapes in northern England. Can't do that today, it is too cold. There were no polar bears or polar ice cap when the dinosaurs walked the earth. Humans need to pull their enlarged heads our of their A$$ES and realize that just because it is warmer than "you" remember that is nothing in geological time, or even recorded history. I liked the fact that people actually acknowledged that this year was almost as bad as the dust bowl years, not that big a deal really in geological or recorded history. Or maybe the dinosaurs quit driving cars and the world cooled down. Get over it.
If you are going to publish a record low sea ice extent at one pole, you should balance it with the report from the National Sea and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) that at the other pole sea ice extent is greater than any time since Captain Cook explored there. But if you are a warmer, I wouldn't expect an honest report.
XQZME
More Antarctic ice is a factoid that only an ignorant person would claim as evidence of Antarctic cooling. The actual fact of the matter is that the Antarctic is warming. More precipitation from global warming means both more Antarctic ice and a warmer Antarctic.
former physicist, I see why you are a former one. You need to check your data. Global temperatures are increasing all over the SOLAR SYSTEM. Solar activity is increasing in accordance with global temps. Looking at the satellite pic, green land is still mostly ice covered. In our own history, the Scandinavians reported it mostly free of ice, hence the term "Greenland". They established a colony there that failed due to decreased temperatures and the advance of ice. That is in our short recorded history on this planet. All this data about the loss of artic ice is taken from satellites since 1979. Wow, great set of data. 33 years versus how many years of ice ages and climatic events. Someone stated earlier that there has never been an increase in atmospheric CO2 like present day. Incorrect. The global warming that preceded the end of the last ice age show even greated concentrations in shorter periods of time as per data found in ice core samples and fossil recors all oer the world. Grow up and leave the liberal kool-aid alone.
That global warming is caused by increased solar activity has been debunked over and over again. Yet here you are, very misinformed, bringing this up again as if it had some validity. It doesn't!
The Antarctic cap is melting. It's getting thinner as it flows from land to the ocean at a faster rate. When the ice reaches the ocean it temporarily causes the area covered by the ever thinner layer of ice to increase. The area it covers will decrease as the ice shelves calve off to form big icebergs. Then, new ice shelves will form, at the fore mentioned faster rate, which is due to the surface between ice and land being lubricated by melt water.
Unlike the Arctic sea ice, as the Antarctic glaciers complete their rush from land to the ocean, they will cause sea levels to rise world wide.
Sorry, no links. It was on the science channel.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1209/S00050/antarctic-ice-area-sets-record-high.htm
What's with all the extra Antarctic ice BS. So what? You guys are idiots. The whole Antarctic is warming despite the fact that there is more ice. The Antarctic is still cold enough that it will freeze new precipitation from global warming.
You guys are intentionally deceptive. YOU are liars.
The whole Antarctic is warming.
It was just reported that the ANTARCTIC ice cap was the THICKEST IN RECORDED HISTORY:
forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/09/19/antarctic-sea-ice-sets-another-record/
SO it seems the ice is not disappearing, but shifting from the north to the south pole.
NBC should have at least mentioned this fact in the article, but I think there is a political agenda going on here.
Ummm, no. The sea ice area hit a record high for that day in history. Sheesh.
What's with all the extra Antarctic ice BS. So what? You guys are idiots. The whole Antarctic is warming despite the fact that there is more ice. The Antarctic is still cold enough that it will freeze new precipitation from global warming.
You guys are intentionally deceptive. YOU are liars.
The whole Antarctic is warming.
I hate the fact that people make Global Warming a political issue. Our kids learn about global warming in
school. The teachers don't tell them it is a political thing, and it's not. What they tell them is to conserve and change their carbon foot print.
My kids learned about drought tolerant plants geothermal and solar panels for homes. They were also told about planting more veggie gardens and less lawn. Some of their projects required them to name energy star
equipment. I don't live in a Liberal area. Most in my area are Republican.
Extreme drought over a period of time will affect farmers' abilities to produce crop. Polluting oceans will
affect the supply of fish. I'm not willing to destroy the planet my kids will live in. I'm totally for putting
politics aside and looking at new technologies to reduce greenhouse gases.
And yes, I did covert all appliances to E-star, built an E-star home with geothermal and drought tolerant
lawn. I'm actually going to build a garden even though I have a brown thumb, but I think they are worth it.
Well, not one person here mentioned the reason how natural variation happens. Milankovitch cycles. There is a 25,000 year wobbling of the earths axis that increases and decreases solar radiation and the precession of the earths orbit. These factors are not influencing the current warming and melting. Go enlighten yourselves and read ... ( http://)en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
I suggest that those of us concerned with our World and environments ignore the few remaining skeptics. They are falling through the thin ice. However, I agree that it cannot just be the US and Europe that reduces CO2 output, it must be all nations with an enforcement body that has real teeth. Quite possibly, the fact that China has so rapidly built a massive expanding economy, increasing the output of warming gases exponentially, by far eclipsing the US, whose emissions have been flat, is the very reason we are seeing such rapid warming beyond that even predicted by feedback systems.
So, although we can elect representatives with serious GW solutions, and we should, it is all for naught if China, India and other developing nations choose to ignore those solutions. I suppose what I would say to the President and Congress is this: We support your attempts to reduce CO2 emissions by developing clean sources of energy. But those measures are only a drop in the bucket unless our economic competitors do the same. Strong World leadership in this arena has been lacking. Now that you have a second term and don't have to worry about being re-elected and a supportive Congress, it's time to fulfill the promise for a cleaner cooler Planet. Time to take risks before it is way too late.
China and India are calling for an extension of Kyoto 2, David.
They've gotten the message. The US is still dragging it's heels.
Its not just receding ice but the integrity of the ice itself is bad.
(http://) www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/rotten+North+Pole+scientist/7282731/story.html
Did NBC get rid of last weeks National Geographic story about starving polar bears? Maybe they realized the truth and the facts didn't support that story.
http://www.polarbearalley.com/blog/index.php/2012/09/22/polar-bear-blog-pre-season/
Now NASA admits that it was the August storm that broke up the ice and led to the decline in ice.
http://www.reuters.com/video/2012/09/21/reuters-tv-nasa-says-arctic-cyclone-played-key-role?videoId=237916780&videoChannel=118065
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/17623/NASA-finally-admits-it-Arctic-cyclone-in-August--broke-up-and-wreaked-havoc-on-sea-ice--Reuters-reports-Arctic-storm-played-key-role-in-seasons-ice-reduction
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444450004578002500275382408.html
So the Arctic does this from time to time all on its own.
So much disinformation by MSM, check out for the rest of the story.
A bigger picture:
When we have: Africa for Africans, Asia for Asians, White Countries for Everybody, what do we have overtime?
We have more and more non-whites in White countries since the right of Whites to exclusive territory is denied them.
We have fewer and fewer White people.
When we mix more non-whites and fewer Whites in the same living space, what do we get?
In time, White extinction. Its called White genocide because this does not happen by chance. It is being forced upon Whites just like a rapist does not take no for an answer.
How is this not so? How is this not White genocide?
Anti-racist is a codeword for anti-white.
Wow! I wonder how many of you know the earth has geologic, ecological, and environmental cycles? Yup, the ice melts, recedes and then it builds back up again. If you take a look at the layers of the earth they can give a lot of information...you know, like this has happened before. We are but a tiny drop in the bucket, there are other things in the environment adding to the receding ice beyond us... this is a live planet so, everything is constantly changing. The earth heats and cools, this is a natural cycle.
PS. Kinda funny how no one talks about the ozone layer anymore, it is all about the ice melting.