Image - NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio / C. Starr
Every year, the frozen surface of the Arctic shrinks in summer, and expands again in fall and winter, which is completely normal. However, as the planet warms, that surface is smaller. And the situation, according to NASA data, has been worrying since 1978, which was when negative records began to be recorded.
In 2016, Arctic ice reached its record low, losing 4,14 million square kilometers Of surface.
This year's thaw season began with an all-time low grade in March, and the ice began to melt rapidly in May. During the following two months, low atmospheric pressures and cloudy skies slowed the process, but after two major storms that passed through the Arctic basin in August, the melting of the ice has been accelerating until the beginning of September.
This fact greatly concerned the scientific community, who expressed that these changes will manifest themselves "in a geographically uneven manner", that is, summers could be dry and hot in some areas, and cold and humid in others, so Action is urgently needed to protect the Arctic and combat climate change.
Without the Arctic ice, the planet's temperature would be very different, since much of sunlight is reflected off its surface, not absorbed by the ocean. Otherwise, we would live on an Earth with seas with extremely warm temperatures, which would undoubtedly contribute to the formation of more intense and destructive cyclones than we currently know.
The Arctic is going through a very worrying situation. Already in April it was learned that a region of Greenland was experiencing a very important thaw, even though it was spring at that time. So, hopefully the necessary action will be taken soon.
You can read the NASA study here, (in English).
Good afternoon, however, despite the fact that the extent of ice in the Arctic is shrinking year after year. I understand that at the other end of Antarctica, the ice has been gaining extension for some years. That's right ???
Hello david.
Yes and no 🙂. Let me explain: the ice on the surface of the continent is reducing, but not the ice in the sea, which on the contrary is increasing.
You have more information this article (It is in English).
A greeting.
Thanks Monica.
Yes, I had already read something about this. The wind regime could be the cause of the increase in the extent of ice in the Antarctic Ocean, I also read that I do not know what part of the Arctic Ocean the same thing happens, and that this change in the wind pattern could be caused by warming global planet.
That said, the next few years or decades we could find ourselves with the paradox that the increase in the average temperature of the planet could trigger an ice age.
Although the extent and thickness of the ice accumulated on the surface of the Antarctic continent or the great Island of Greenland in the Arctic clearly decreases. If the sea ice expands at both poles, the planet's surface would quickly cool down due to the albedo effect, it is already known that the more frozen surface, the more solar radiation is returned to the atmosphere.
On the other hand we have the effect of the slowdown of the famous Gulf Stream (I think it has been proven), a current that has caused the temperate climate that we have had in Western Europe for thousands of years, and if it ends up stopping it would cause a great cooling in much of Northern hemisphere, due to an exchange between the very cold and deep waters of the North Atlantic Ocean and the much warmer of the more superficial ones.
And finally, the finishing touch to have a full-blown glaciation is in our Sun, our beloved star on which we depend on everything.
Well it seems that the Sun is entering a phase of very little activity, the last time this happened was between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. With a solar minimum called the Maunder Minimum, a period that lasted from 1645 to 1715, when sunspots practically disappeared from the surface of the Sun.
This effect caused the period called "little ice age", causing, for example, that the River Thames in London will be completely frozen every winter or that sections of the Ebro River will even freeze in some winters.
Greetings.