putting the "cry" in "cryosphere" -- thinner than expected

[phantom power]

Preliminary results from the European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 probe indicate that 900 cubic kilometres of summer sea ice has disappeared from the Arctic ocean over the past year.

This rate of loss is 50% higher than most scenarios outlined by polar scientists and suggests that global warming, triggered by rising greenhouse gas emissions, is beginning to have a major impact on the region. In a few years the Arctic ocean could be free of ice in summer, triggering a rush to exploit its fish stocks, oil, minerals and sea routes.

Using instruments on earlier satellites, scientists could see that the area covered by summer sea ice in the Arctic has been dwindling rapidly. But the new measurements indicate that this ice has been thinning dramatically at the same time. For example, in regions north of Canada and Greenland, where ice thickness regularly stayed at around five to six metres in summer a decade ago, levels have dropped to one to three metres.

"Preliminary analysis of our data indicates that the rate of loss of sea ice volume in summer in the Arctic may be far larger than we had previously suspected," said Dr Seymour Laxon, of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at University College London (UCL), where CryoSat-2 data is being analysed. "Very soon we may experience the iconic moment when, one day in the summer, we look at satellite images and see no sea ice coverage in the Arctic, just open water."

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2012/08/more-news-on-cryosat-2.html

[pscot]

1. The entire Arctic should be declared a world heritage site

and put off limits to commmercial exploitation of any kind.

[Junkdrawer]

2. After reading posts on Neven's blog, it looks to me like the ice is being eaten from below...

wind driven ice is stirring up the salty/fresh water layers and the salt water is attacking the submerged ice. All this is amplified by:

1.) Increasing storms

2.) Ice sheet breakup into more mobile chunks