Saturday, September 8, 2012

Two important images

As Arctic sea ice continues to decline, breaking one record after the other, one wonders what more can be said to capture the significance of what is happening. Two images spring to mind.

The image below, from The Cryosphere Today, shows that Arctic sea ice has shrunk in area by 11.41475 million square km from March 28, 2012, to September 6, 2012, a fall of about 83¼ percent in 162 days.



The image below illustrates the dramatic drop in sea ice volume over the years. The image is based on data calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) developed at the Applied Physics Laboratory/Polar Science Center at the University of Washington.


The PIOMAS data for the annual minimum values are the black dots. The trend (in red) is added by Wipneus and points at the start of the year 2015 as the moment when ice volume will first reach zero. The red point indicates the most recent value for 2012 volume, noting of course that this value may still come down further as the year progresses.

This image is further discussed in the post Getting the picture.

2 comments:

  1. IN the Springtime come the migrating birds, the flowers, the gentle showers and warming sun..
    IN the Summer come the fields of plenty, the song of warmth a plenty and time to play perhaps..
    IN the Fall come the reminder in winds of changing season a slowdown of like life's song..
    But in Winter a time to check the seasons and count on Spring to come.. To wait and see with song.. The contrast of Seasons

    I guess the Title gets said last in poem o living.
    Like writing backwards only for some to see..
    But different ways of saying things speak loudest..
    Loudest for some is science, some the seasons and what they see.. For others who knows..

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  2. It looks like this ice could reach zero before even the end of next week judging by how fast it's been declining and once the ice melts the earth ends the next day with extreme methane releases leading to greenhouse global warming in the next few weeks whereas humans will run screaming in pain as they are baked in temperatures of 300 degrees centigrade.

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