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FOR KIDS: A record Arctic melt

Satellites show summer 2012 sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean shrunk to a record low

By Stephen Ornes

Web edition: September 11, 2012

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Arctic sea ice forms in the ocean, unlike glaciers and icebergs that form from land-based freshwater.

Andy Mahoney, NSIDC

During the winter, frozen sea ice covers most of the Arctic Ocean. Every summer, a portion of that ice melts away. Government scientists who keep track of those losses during the warmer months now report this summer has been one for the record books.

On August 26, Arctic sea ice cover fell to 4.1 million square kilometers (about 1.6 million square miles). That’s the smallest ice cover ever observed since scientists started using satellite data in 1979 to measure the yearly melt, note researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.

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Citations

A. Witze. Arctic sea ice hits record low, and keeps going. Science News Online, August 28, 2012. [Go to]

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As the ACRIM and SORCE satellite data reveal, the Sun has resumed warming since 2011. As the Sun increases its energy output, the solar forcing effect is amplified by our Earth's watery exterior. Ocean currents carry solar warmed waters north into the Arctic, melting ice and exposing more water to absorb solar heat energy rather than reflect it back into space as ice does.

Apparently small changes in solar energy output are greatly amplified by earth's oceans and watery atmosphere. With the Sun warming again, the next few years should give us more ice melt as the planet continues thawing out of the Little Ice Age.

If we are lucky, the Earth will get as warm as it was a thousand years ago during the Medieval Climate Optimum, which lengthened growing seasons in the temperate zones and created a time of plenty for human civilizations there.

Victor Sayre

Sep. 17, 2012 at 3:44pm

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