9 August 2015
National Geographic Adjusts Arctic Maps To Account For Ice Loss
Posted by Dan Satterfield
The National Geographic Society has put out a press release about their recently updated Arctic maps, with a more realistic depiction of the muli-year ice pack. The animated gif above shows the dramatic and unprecedented change underway at the top of the world. Interestingly the Antarctic is different because instead of ocean you have land with thousands of feet of ice on top. As that land ice melts, it freshens the ocean water and it freezes easier. The slight increase in Antarctic ice is just as much a result of the warming planet as the loss of ice in the High Arctic.
The graph below from NSIDC shows how rapid the summer ice loss has been north of 60.