Sea-ice loss in 2011

Scientists from 14 nations have compared how the climate has change over the past 5 years and they’ve found out that the artic each time warmer and icy. Sea-ice loss in 2011 was the second most severe in the 32-year satellite record of Arctic monitoring.

Jacqueline Richter-Menge of the U.S. Army’s Cold Regions Research and Egineering Laboratory said that “This shift is characterized by the persistent decline in the thickness and summer extent of sea-ice cover and by a warmer, less salty upper ocean.”

There were unusually warm Arctic temperatures in 2006 together with a persistent weather pattern that pushed ice across the Arctic and into the North Atlantic through the Fram Strait east of Greenland. Jacqueline says “We like to call it the perfect storm of the Arctic.”

There is a big loss of old, multi-year ice, scientist are trying to adjust to the “new normal”. Regional warming and melting of land ice cover have also continued at a record pace, the new report finds. Monitoring systems have been used for a decade to detect continuous warming at Arctic sites near the coast, and we have seen that there has been accompanied by a greening of the landscape as reduced snow cover has allowed small shrubs to grow bigger and seeds of trees and other plants to germinate in formerly frozen soils.

The most recent data suggest that this warming “has begun to propagate south towards the northern foothills of the Brooks Range, where a noticeable warming in the upper 20 meters of permafrost has become evident since 2008,” the report says.

The major melting has substantially darkened the sea and landscape, making both better absorbers of solar energy and accelerating the region’s warming. Many people ask themselves if they are going to be able to recover this dark scenario, but this recovery seems to be very difficult and faraway from achievement.

If this change continues on the Arctic, our whole climate could change. We have seen already early patters of change like altered wind particles which in the future when other patterns develop will affect us and the environment. Researchers have also seen that the cold Artic air isn’t staying in the Artic anymore instead it’s going to the south (temperate regions).

Jacqueline said that: “These changes represent a persistent condition” — with consequences far beyond the Arctic.