Sea ice in the Arctic appears to have hit its annual maximum extent after growing through the fall and winter. “The seasonal ice now represents a larger fraction of the Arctic sea ice cover. With the Arctic showing more extreme indications of climate change, researchers have found that the movement patterns of animals in the region are shifting, which could disrupt entire ecosystems. Holly Shaftel This means that Greenland has been melting five times faster than it did in the mid-90s. Susan Callery Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, By María José Viñas, Science Editor: Science Editor: A 2018 study led by Ron Kwok, a sea ice researcher with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, found that 70 percent of the ice pack now consists of seasonal ice — sea ice that grows rapidly in the winter only to melt during the next summer. Because this young ice is thinner and grows faster in the winter, it is more responsive to weather and makes the sea ice cover respond differently than before. If this melted it’s thought that sea levels would rise by up to 60m! The largest amount of ice ever lost on a single day. Notably, the disappearing polar ice caps will accelerate global warming, cause widespread coastal … Daniel Bailey. NASA’s Earth Science News Team. It has other effects, too, including the increased risk of flooding, tropical storms and hurricanes during storm seasons. Arctic sea ice likely reached its 2019 minimum extent on Sept. 18. The Arctic is experiencing a vast melting of sea ice. Normally, it would take 6 days of combined melting from the world's glaciers and ice sheets to reach the same amount. According to NASA, the polar ice caps are melting at an alarming rate of 9% per decade. There are no requirements with respect to size or composition for a body of ice to be termed a polar ice cap, nor any geological requirement for it to be over land, but only that it must be a body of solid phase matter in the polar region. At 1.60 million square miles (4.15 million square kilometers), this year's summertime extent is effectively tied for the second in the satellite record, according to NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center. 8 Facts You Should Know about the Polar Ice Caps Melting Our weather is becoming more unstable and dangerous. This expansion in turn causes sea levels to rise. The 2019 maximum extent breaks a string of record or near-record lows that started in 2015 — but that does not necessarily mean that Arctic sea ice is recovering. “The temperatures in the Arctic were a bit higher than average and we saw a lot of ice loss in the Bering Sea, but nothing this winter was as extreme or dramatic compared to recent years and the record lows.”. Al warned them that “the entire North ‘polarized’ cap will disappear in 5 years.” An ice sheet is glacial ice covering more then 50,000 square kilometers. “As for the European heat wave, it definitely affected land ice loss in Greenland and also caused a spike in melt along Greenland’s east coast, but that’s an area where sea ice is being transported down the coast and melting fairly quickly anyway.”, This website is produced by the Earth Science Communications Team at, Site Editor: 2008 2019. The world's newest sea level-measuring satellite is scheduled to launch on Saturday, Nov. 21, at 9:17 a.m. PT. While the ice caps are beautiful to look at, and may be on the New Wonders of the World list, they serve a purpose in earth cycles. The ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica is … Updated data from NASA satellite instruments reveal the Earth’s polar ice caps have not receded at all since the satellite instruments began measuring the ice caps in … It is not happening. Researchers indicate that 2016 was the hottest year on record. Right now, the Antarctic sea ice is higher than any time in the past 5 years, and higher than 11 of the first 20 years ever surveyed from 1980 through 2000. N_daily_extent.png (420×500) Experts describe this expansion of Arctic ice and normal levels of ice as being a melting death spiral, which is wreaking havoc on weather patterns. When they melt, sea level isn't directly affected, because this ice is already in the ocean. Credit: NASA/Trent Schindler, By Maria-José Viñas, Melting Polar Ice Caps. What sea ice does exist tends to be younger, thinner and more susceptible to melting. The 2019 wintertime extent reached on March 13 ties with 2007’s as the seventh 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. Ice sheets form when snow that falls in winter doesn’t entirely melt in summer. Polar ice cap melting would create a rise in sea levels, and a sudden collapse of West Antarctic ice sheets could raise sea levels from 16-20 feet. A record start to summer ice melt in Greenland this year has drawn attention to the northern ice sheet. Between the two polar caps, Greenland is losing much more ice. The Arctic sea ice cover, an expanse of frozen seawater floating on top of the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas, thickens and expands during the fall and winter months. “In Peru, they really are like water towers,” says Paul. Since climate change is one of the biggest concern nowadays, scientists indicate its effect point out some polar ice caps facts in the Arctic area. This video can be downloaded at NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio. It’s not that we won’t see new wintertime or summertime record lows in the next years – it’s just that the variability is going to be higher.”, This website is produced by the Earth Science Communications Team at, Site Editor: Managing Editor: The U.S.-European collaboration aims to measure sea level and will launch from the California coast in late November. ... June 12, 2019 … At 1.60 million square miles (4.15 million square kilometers), this year's summertime extent is effectively tied for the second in the satellite record, according to NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The ice is melting at both the polar caps, and it is melting rapidly. The last two weeks have seen periods of declining extent along with periods of little change or even gains in extent. Thu 16 May 2019 04.00 EDT Last modified on Thu 16 May 2019 18.40 ... Polar regions Sea level Climate change ... Mass melting of Antarctic ice sheet led … “While this year wasn’t a record low, the maximum extent still points to there being a sustained decline in winter sea ice,” said Melinda Webster, a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. This increased growth of sea ice has helped to … Daniel Bailey. Here is what you need to know to keep up. It has been a focus of attention in recent years, largely because of a strong decrease in the Arctic sea ice cover and modeling results that indicate that global warming could be amplified in the Arctic on account of ice-albedo feedback. Every year, it expands and thickens during the fall and winter and grows smaller and thinner during the spring and summer. But something is happening under the ice that scientists don't fully understand. The polar ice caps are melting six times faster than in the 1990s, according to the most complete analysis to date. But in recent years, the extent is low enough that weather conditions can either make that particular year’s extent into a new record low or keep it within the group of the lowest.”. “The long-term trend for Arctic sea ice extent has been definitively downward. They say the Arctic is gone, and ask what “we” can do to stop it. All this melting ice is not just filling our oceans at an alarming rate. On December 13, 2008, junk scientist Al Gore predicted the North Polar Ice Cap would be completely ice free in five years. A pair of new studies released on Monday share a same ominous message -- that our planet's ice is melting at an alarming rate, which is bad news for global sea levels. Source. With polar ice caps melting comes increased rates of global warming. The U.S.-European collaboration aims to measure sea level and will launch from the California coast in late November. With the Arctic showing more extreme indications of climate change, researchers have found that the movement patterns of animals in the region are shifting, which could disrupt entire ecosystems. The Arctic sea ice cap is an expanse of frozen seawater floating on top of the Arctic Ocean and neighboring seas. The world's newest sea level-measuring satellite is scheduled to launch on Saturday, Nov. 21, at 9:17 a.m. PT. A recent study by NASA found that sea ice is growing faster during the winter months today than it did decades ago. From the hurricane that broke the levees in New Orleans to the disastrous drought in California, many of us wonder what we can do. Ice caps in polar regions are known as polar ice caps. Beyond its seasonal wax and wane cycles, Arctic sea ice extent has been plummeting during both the growing and melting seasons over the last 40 years. The extent of Arctic sea ice at the end of this summer was effectively tied with 2007 and 2016 for second lowest since modern record keeping began in the late 1970s. The sea ice cover is one of the key components of the polar climate system. Ice shelves are massive, floating platforms of ice that surround the ice-covered continents of Antarctica and Greenland. Although they were abnormally large, the state of the polar ice caps in 1979 became the standard baseline in NASA’s study. According to scientists at the U.S Center for Atmospheric Research, if the current rate of global temperature rise continues, the Arctic will be … Susan Callery There have been numerous articles stating that the melting of ice caps has been at a record low, but that still does not hide the truth that the polar ice caps are indeed melting and at … “At the beginning of August we were at record low ice levels for that time of the year, so a new minimum record low could have been in the offering. Today, polar ice caps are melting six times faster than they did in the 1990s. In the past, there has been a disinformation campaign about the melting polar ice caps. “By the time the Siberian fires kicked into high gear in late July, the Sun was already getting low in the Arctic, so the effect of the soot from the fires darkening the sea ice surface wasn’t that large,” Meier said. A polar ice cap or polar cap is a high-latitude region of a planet, dwarf planet, or natural satellite that is covered in ice.. The result in Summer means temperatures stay cold especially with evaporative cooling and ice melting producing latent heat. Collapse Of The Polar Melting Scam Posted on January 28, 2019 by tonyheller Arctic sea ice volume last spring was the highest of the past decade, and this year is well ahead of last year. The polar jet stream becomes too weak during around summer, so energy plumes from the South have great difficulty reaching Arctic areas above 80N. With thick ice gone, Arctic sea ice changes more slowly. The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest single mass of ice on Earth. The Arctic summer sea ice melted in massive amounts. Although it was a warm summer in the Arctic, with average temperatures 7 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit (4 to 5 degrees Celsius) above what is normal for the central Arctic, events such as this year’s severe Arctic wildfire season or European heat wave ended up not having much impact on the sea ice melt. Paired with the 2019 Arctic heatwave, this melting rate may produce disastrous outcomes. Global warming deniers claim that the results concerning sea ice at a global level appear to have evened out. The 2019 wintertime extent reached on March 13 ties with 2007’s as the seventh 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. Multiyear ice, the older and thicker ice that acted like a bastion against melting for the rest of the sea ice cover, has mostly disappeared. A new study tracing the sources of carbon dioxide, the most significant human-generated greenhouse gas, reveals the unexpectedly large influence of vegetation in urban environments. “The large changes in ice coverage associated with the loss of the multiyear ice pack have already occurred,” Kwok said. An analysis of satellite data by NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder shows that the 2019 minimum extent, which was likely reached on Sept. 18, measured 1.60 million square miles (4.15 million square kilometers). Microwave instruments onboard United States Department of Defense’s meteorological satellites monitored the changes from space. Arctic sea ice extent was 4.21 million square kilometers (1.62 million square miles) on September 16, which is likely near the seasonal minimum extent that is expected within the next week. 9,000,000,000,000 Science Editor: Melting glaciers will also impact the inland communities that rely on them. “This was an interesting melt season,” said Walt Meier, a sea ice researcher at NSIDC. Managing Editor: Randal Jackson Effects of Polar Ice Caps Melting . Science Editor: Holly Shaftel From August 30 through September 5, there was a total loss of about 320,000 square kilometers (123,600 square miles). May 13, 2019, 11:00 AM EDT 4:40. ”But unlike 2012, the year with the lowest ice extent on record, which experienced a powerful August cyclone that smashed the ice cover and accelerated its decline, the 2019 melt season didn’t see any extreme weather events. Here is what you need to know to keep up. So far, the results have been positively chilling. 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. The thickness of the Arctic Ice has decreased by 40% since the 1960s. Gore made the prediction to a German audience on December 13, 2008. Randal Jackson Arctic sea ice extent is close to the 1981-2010 median. Sea ice in the Arctic appears to have hit its annual maximum extent after growing through the fall and winter. Credit: NASA/ Trent Schindler. It’s estimated that two-thirds of the ice loss in both polar caps is happening in Greenland. What is an ice sheet? Changes in Arctic sea ice cover have wide-ranging impacts. The sea ice affects local ecosystems, regional and global weather patterns, and the circulation of the oceans. Meltwater gushes from an ice cap on the island of Nordaustlandet, ... measuring how the park's storied glaciers are melting. Rising temperatures in the Arctic over the past decades have also thinned the sea ice pack. NASA’s Earth Science News Team. But in the past decades, increasing temperatures have caused marked decreases in the Arctic sea ice extents in all seasons, with particularly rapid reductions in the minimum end-of-summer ice extent. The melt season started with a very low sea ice extent, followed by a very rapid ice loss in July that slowed down considerably after mid-August. The sea ice hits its maximum yearly extent sometime between late February and early April. A new study tracing the sources of carbon dioxide, the most significant human-generated greenhouse gas, reveals the unexpectedly large influence of vegetation in urban environments. Arctic sea ice likely reached its 2019 minimum extent on Sept. 18. On 1st of August 2019, Greenland lost 12.5 billion tons of ice in a single day. It thins and shrinks during the spring and summer until it reaches its annual minimum extent in September. Climate Change Is Melting The Polar Ice Cap And The Navy Is Looking North The Pentagon has long acknowledged climate change has broad implications for national security. “This year’s minimum sea ice extent shows that there is no sign that the sea ice cover is rebounding,” said Claire Parkinson, a climate change senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. melting ice sheets, rising seas As climate change caused by burning fossil fuels drives temperatures higher, the ocean warms, causing it to expand.