Topic: Arctic Sea Ice

NASA data shows Arctic Sea Ice 2019 Wintertime Extent Is Seventh Lowest

March 22, 2019 |

Written by Maria-Jose Vinas
NASA’s Earth Science News Team

Washington, D.C. – Sea ice in the Arctic appears to have hit its annual maximum extent after growing through the fall and winter. The 2019 wintertime extent reached on March 13th ties with 2007’s as the 7th smallest extent of winter sea ice in the satellite record, according to scientists at the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center and NASA.

This year’s maximum extent peaked at 5.71 million square miles (14.78 million square kilometers) and is 332,000 square miles (860,000 square kilometers) below the 1981 to 2010 average maximum – equivalent to missing an area of ice larger than the state of Texas.

A big lead, or opening in the sea ice pack, in the eastern Beaufort Sea, as seen from a NASA Operation IceBridge survey flight on Apr. 14, 2018. (NASA/Linette Boisvert)

«Read the rest of this article»

NASA reports Wintertime Arctic Sea Ice Growth Slows, Long-term Decline

December 10, 2018 |

Written by Maria-José Viñas
NASA’s Earth Science News Team

Washington, D.C. – New NASA research has found that increases in the rate at which Arctic sea ice grows in the winter may have partially slowed down the decline of the Arctic sea ice cover.

As temperatures in the Arctic have warmed at double the pace of the rest of the planet, the expanse of frozen seawater that blankets the Arctic Ocean and neighboring seas has shrunk and thinned over the past three decades. The end-of-summer Arctic sea ice extent has almost halved since the early 1980s. A recent NASA study found that since 1958, the Arctic sea ice cover has lost on average around two-thirds of its thickness and now 70 percent of the sea ice cap is made of seasonal ice, or ice that forms and melts within a single year.

A lone Arctic sea ice floe, observed during the Beaufort Gyre Exploration Project in October 2014. (NASA/Alek Petty)

«Read the rest of this article»

NASA reports Arctic Winter Sea Ice Extent second lowest on record

March 26, 2018 |

Written by Maria-José Viñas
?NASA’s Earth Science News Team

Washington, D.C. – Sea ice in the Arctic grew to its annual maximum extent last week, and joined 2015, 2016 and 2017 as the four lowest maximum extents on record, according to scientists at the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA.

On March 17th, the Arctic sea ice cover peaked at 5.59 million square miles (14.48 million square kilometers), making it the second lowest maximum on record, at about 23,200 square miles (60,000 square kilometers) larger than the record low maximum reached on March 7th, 2017.

On March 17th, the Arctic sea ice cover peaked at 5.59 million square miles (14.48 million square kilometers), making it the second lowest maximum on record. (NASA/ Nathan Kurtz)

«Read the rest of this article»

NASA reports 2015 Warm Cyclone thinned Arctic Sea Ice

November 16, 2016 |

Written by Maria-José Viñas
NASA’s Earth Science News Team

Washington, D.C. – A large cyclone that crossed the Arctic in December 2015 brought so much heat and humidity to this otherwise frigid and dry environment that it thinned and shrunk the sea ice cover during a time of the year when the ice should have been growing thicker and stronger, a NASA study found.

The cyclone formed on December 28th, 2015, in the middle of the North Atlantic, and traveled to the United Kingdom and Iceland before entering the Arctic on December 30th, lingering in the area for several days.

This image shows the winds and warm mass of air associated with a large cyclone that swept the Arctic in late December 2015-early January 2016, thinning and shrinking the sea ice cover. (NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio/Alex Kekesi, data visualizer)

«Read the rest of this article»

NASA researchers observe Arctic losing it’s older Sea Ice

October 31, 2016 |

Written by Maria-José Viñas
NASA’s Earth Science News Team

Washington, D.C. – Arctic sea ice, the vast sheath of frozen seawater floating on the Arctic Ocean and its neighboring seas, has been hit with a double whammy over the past decades: as its extent shrunk, the oldest and thickest ice has either thinned or melted away, leaving the sea ice cap more vulnerable to the warming ocean and atmosphere.

“What we’ve seen over the years is that the older ice is disappearing,” said Walt Meier, a sea ice researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Compare the extension of older sea ice in the Arctic in September 1984 and September 2016. The older ice is thicker and more resistant to melt than new ice, so it protects the sea ice cap during warm summers. In September 1984, there were 1.86 million square kilometers of old ice (5 years or older) left throughout the Arctic sea ice cap during its yearly minimum extent; in September 2016, there were only 110,000 square kilometers of older sea ice left. (NASA’S Scientific Visualization Studio)

«Read the rest of this article»

NASA Study reveals reasons for Sea Ice Changes at the Arctic, Antarctica

May 21, 2016 |

Written by Alan Buis
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Why has the sea ice cover surrounding Antarctica been increasing slightly, in sharp contrast to the drastic loss of sea ice occurring in the Arctic Ocean? A new NASA-led study finds the geology of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean are responsible.

A NASA/NOAA/university team led by Son Nghiem of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, used satellite radar, sea surface temperature, land form and bathymetry (ocean depth) data to study the physical processes and properties affecting Antarctic sea ice.

Older, rougher and thicker Antarctic sea ice in the Bellingshausen Sea in Oct. 2007, within the sea ice shield surrounding Antarctica. The ice in this region is approximately 33 feet (10 meters) thick. (M.J. Lewis)

«Read the rest of this article»

NASA Earth Scientists to study Arctic Sea Ice losses effects on Clouds, Weather, Global Warming

October 16, 2014 |

Written by Tony Phillips
Science at NASA

Washington, D.C. – Climate change is a global phenomenon, yet Earth scientists are keeping a wary eye on one place in particular–the Arctic.

“Polar regions are important for us to study right now,” explains Tom Wagner of NASA’s Earth Science Division in Washington DC. “They are changing rapidly.”

One of the most visible of signs of warming is the retreat of Arctic sea ice. Every year, sea ice waxes and wanes in a normal response to the changing of seasons; the annual sea ice minimum occurs near the end of northern summer. Since the 1970s, researchers carefully watched to see if the rhythm of Arctic sea ice would respond to global warming.

«Read the rest of this article»

NASA reports Arctic sea ice coverage at Sixth Lowest on Record

September 24, 2014 |

Written by Tony Phillips
Science at NASA

Washington, D.C. – Arctic sea ice coverage continued its below-average trend this year as the ice declined to its annual minimum on September 17th, according to the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

“Arctic sea ice coverage in 2014 is the sixth lowest recorded since 1978,” said Walter Meier, a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

«Read the rest of this article»

NASA reports Snow Cover on Sea Ice in the Arctic has thinned significantly in last 50 years

August 24, 2014 |

Written by Alan Buis
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – New research led by NASA and the University of Washington, Seattle, confirms that springtime snow on sea ice in the Arctic has thinned significantly in the last 50 years, by about a third in the Western Hemisphere and by half near Alaska.

The new study, published this month in the Journal of Geophysical Research, tracks changes in snow depth over decades. It combines data from NASA’s Bromide, Ozone, and Mercury Experiment (BROMEX) field campaign, NASA’s Operation IceBridge flights, and instrumented buoys and ice floes staffed by Soviet scientists from the 1950s through the 1990s.

Matthew Sturm of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, a co-author of this study, takes a snow measurement on sea ice in the Beaufort Sea in March 2012 during the BROMEX field campaign. (U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory)

«Read the rest of this article»

NASA uses direct Satellite Observations to examine Ice Increases in the Antarctic Sea

November 19, 2012 |

Written by Alan Buis and Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – NASA and British Antarctic Survey scientists have reported the first direct evidence that marked changes to Antarctic sea ice drift caused by changing winds are responsible for observed increases in Antarctic sea ice cover in the past two decades.

The results help explain why, unlike the dramatic sea ice losses being reported in the Arctic, Antarctic sea ice cover has increased under the effects of climate change.

View of Sheldon Glacier with Mount Barre in the background, seen from Ryder Bay near Rothera Research Station, Adelaide Island, Antarctica. A new NASA/British Antarctic Survey study examines why Antarctic sea ice cover has increased under the effects of climate change over the past two decades.

«Read the rest of this article»

© 2006-2021 Clarksville, TN Online is owned and operated by residents of Clarksville Tennessee.
» We are Hosted by Compu-Net Enterprises; In Partnership with Discover Clarksville and Discover Paris