You are browsing the archive for Arctic Ice Archives - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.
18 September 2019
Arctic Sea Ice Melt May be 2nd Lowest On Record
The summer melt of the Arctic sea ice is nearly done and the numbers are flirting with being the 2nd lowest on record. 2012 is the lowest and this year will not be as low but still at alarming levels. The real change is the loss of the multi ice that lasts from year to year. This “old” ice is nearly gone and you can see it disappear in this …
12 December 2018
NOAA’s Says The Polar Freezer is In Defrost Mode
NOAA’s Arctic Report Card came out today but with all the news (that’s barely fit to print) these days, it was easy to miss. Here’s a summary of the major points and an excellent video from NOAA that summarises it. Too bad I’ve not seen it linked on any major news sites. You can read the whole report here. Report Card Highlights from NOAA Surface air temperatures in the Arctic continued to …
5 March 2018
Arctic Sea Ice May Be About To Set Another Record Low
Earth science community is all watching the Arctic sea ice right now. We are very close to the winter maximum extent, and it may very well be the lowest on record. The ice has grown slowly due to the incredibly warm temperatures across the region compared to the average. Look how warm the entire Arctic was on 25 February. Since then, it has cooled somewhat. here are today’s anomalies. …
23 March 2017
Sea Ice and China Smog
Even Antarctica saw record low ice area during their summer (boreal winter), but there’s new research that seems to show a link between the Arctic ice loss and increased air pollution in China. With dark, heat-absorbing water now replacing what was once bright and very reflective ice, the energy balance of the atmosphere has to change, and that change translates to changing weather patterns. There is quite a bit of research into this now, …
29 December 2016
The Smoking Gun of Arctic Warmth Leads To A Stunning Indictment
It normally takes many months to get a paper through peer review and into a journal, but a group of scientists has released their detection and attribution study early, and it’s a stunning indictment. We now know the culprit for the astonishing Arctic warmth of November and December. It seemed very likely that the guilty party was rising greenhouse gasses with Arctic amplification as the accomplice, and that’s JUST what …
24 November 2016
What’s Happening in the Arctic is Astonishing
I’ve been busy with the GOES-R launch, but am also following the incredible situation in the High Arctic, where Arctic Sea ice continues to run at record low levels. More like falling of a cliff actually, and the only word I can come up with is astonishing! There is a real temperature dipole showing up between the warm Arctic and the very cold areas of Russia/Asia where the snowfall was …
13 September 2016
Hottest August On Record- NASA
NASA announced Tuesday that August 2016 was the hottest August ever measured on Earth, with records going back to 1880. It also ties July for the hottest month ever measured. Much of the Northeast U.S. also had the hottest August on record as well. It is now virtually certain that 2016 will pass 2015 as the hottest year on record. Notice in the image below how much hotter 2015 was …
15 September 2015
Arctic Sea Ice Reaches 4th Lowest Extent on Record
The summer sea ice melt has ended in the High Arctic, and the ice pack melted back to the 4th lowest extent on the satellite record. From the Nat. Snow Ice Data Center: On September 11, 2015, sea ice extent dropped to 4.41 million square kilometers (1.70 million square miles), the fourth lowest minimum in the satellite record. This appears to be the lowest extent of the year. In response to …
9 August 2015
National Geographic Adjusts Arctic Maps To Account For Ice Loss
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 …
17 August 2013
State of Flux- Some Amazing NASA Images Of A Changing Planet
NASA has a bunch of stunning images online showing what a ~1 degree Celsius warming over the last century has done to the planet. Click on the image above for many, many more images. What’s even more amazing to me is the number of people who still believe the planet is not warming, or that this is all a natural cycle. Every possible internal cycle has been looked at. Even …
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.