Will 2012 be the end for Arctic Summer Ice?

Rising global sea levels, weather changes, snow covered food crops and displaced nations and species.

Not a bright future and it may be only 3 years away.

Arctic Summer Ice Gone by 2012

In 2007, scientists examined the record ice melt over the Arctic to attempt to assess the cause and to identify if it was a realistic indicator of future happenings or just a blip.

Revised estimates confirm that the accelerated melt is continuing and within 3 years there will be no summer ice in the Arctic.

• In 2007, Greenland’s ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark .

Despite scary predictions in 2006 that claimed there would be no summer sea ice by 2040; top scientists revised this estimate down in 2007 by a full 28 years to 2012.

Source: National Geographic, Arctic Sea Ice Gone in Summer Within Five Years?

The Global Ocean Conveyor Belt

The rapid melting and disappearance of summer sea ice adversely affects the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt, resulting in changes to things including weather patterns and levels of fresh water.

• How will Europe grow crops in snow?

For up to date coverage of the ice situation in the Arctic sea, check out National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

Coincidentally, BBC and the Discovery Channel are scheduled to air a documentary series, titled Frozen Planet, in 2012 – focusing on life in the Arctic and the Antarctic. Part of this series shows NSIDC scientist Shari Gearhead’s research in Inuit culture and climate change in the Arctic.

NASA’s views on melting ice in the Arctic Ocean

NASA scientists confirmed the extent of the problem stating that there was a “40% drop in ice coverage between 2005 and 2007.”

Visit the NASA site for a explanation of how they measure the Arctic’s ice depth and see a very cool animation of  “ice albedo feedback“.

NASA’s Characterization of Arctic Sea Ice Experiment, known as CASIE conducted 11 unmanned flights over sea ice, covering a total of 2,923 kilometres.

CASIE is the aircraft campaign portion of the larger, NASA-funded project titled “Sea Ice Roughness as an Indicator of Fundamental Changes in the Arctic Ice Cover: Observations, Monitoring, and Relationships to Environmental Factors.

The below images were taken in July 2009 and show the melting ice.

The second image shows a close-up of the bottom left corner of the first image. You can see what appears to be polar bear tracks.

• Why didn’t the polar bear cross to the other side?
• Could it if it wanted to?

NASA’s CASIE Team agreed that the melting Arctic Ice situation is a definite ongoing problem:

“This change has been rapid and extreme. For example, our analysis of satellite data shows that the amount of older ice in 2009 is just 12% of what it was in 1988 – a decline of 74%. The oldest ice types now cover only 2% of the Arctic Ocean as compared to 20% during the 1980’s.”

The Catastrophy of Rising Global Sea Levels

To understand the full extent of rising global water levels, read National Geographics’ article Warming to Cause Catastrophic Rise in Sea Level?

“Even with a small sea level rise, we’re going to destroy whole nations and their cultures that have existed for thousands of years.”

Related Articles:

1. National Geographic on 2012
2. The Internet is Buzzing About 2012
3. Giant Antarctic Iceberg Heading for Australia

Tagged as: Arctic Ocean, CASIE, climate change, frozen planet, global ocean conveyor belt, ice albedo feedback, melting ice, NASA, NSIDC, polar bear, sea ice