State of the Arcticlonger melting seasons, thinning sea ice
The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and scientists are seeing the effects across ice and ecosystems. The average annual air temperature over Arctic land is now 3.5°C (6.5°F) warmer than it was 1900, Greenland is experiencing longer melting seasons, and this year's spring snow cover extent set a record low in the North American Arctic, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's newly released 2016 Arctic Report Card.
Understanding the changes is becoming increasingly important for economic planning and national security in many countries, as well as for the daily lives of people whose communities are directly affected.
Marco Tedesco, a glaciologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the lead author of the Arctic Report Card chapter on Greenland, spoke at a news conference today for the report card's release and described some of the changes he has been seeing in Greenland.
The Greenland Ice sheet, which holds enough water to raise global sea level by an estimated 6 meters (20 feet), has been losing mass since at least 2002, when satellite measurements of the ice sheet began, and its melting season has been starting earlier. In 2016, the start of Greenland's annual summer surface melt was the second earliest in the 37 years that satellites have been observing the ice sheet, Tede
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-12-state-arcticlonger-seasons-thinning-sea.html#jCp