Articles used
Alexeev, V.A., Ivanov, V.V., Kwok, K., and Smedsrud, L.H.. North Atlantic warming and
declining volume of arctic sea ice. The Cryosphere Discussions. 2013. 7, 245-265, doi:
10.519/tcd-7-245-2013.
This article gave me the information on the quantities of ice that was available in Arctic Sea in January 2013. I used this information to make a comparison with the quantity of ice that was available in the Arctic sea in the December 2012.
Zhang, J., R. Lindsay, A. Schweiger, and M. Steele. The impact of an intense summer
cyclone on 2012 Arctic sea ice retreat. Geophysical Research Letters, In press, 2013. doi:
10.1002/grl.50190.
With this article, I gathered information for the quantity of ice available in the Arctic Sea in December 2012. I also gathered information for the conditions of the adjacent surrounding as a result of the low ice in the Arctic Sea. I got information about Antarctica which was useful in analyzing the data.
NSIDC. Scientists provide Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis, with partial support from NASA.
Retrieved from
<http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/>
The article from this website helped with information from the NSIDC scientist team who showed the records of satellite image for the ice flow in the Arctic Sea. This website also offered a daily update of the satellite image for the ice flows in the Arctic Sea.
Current event analysis: Arctic Sea Ice News and analysis
For January 2013, Arctic sea ice has been below average because of the extensive water in Svalbard and Barents Sea. The Arctic oscillation also maintained at a negative part. Antarctic sea ice was extensive because of abnormal northward excursion of ice from the Weddell Sea (Alexeev, Ivanov, Kwok & Smedsrud 23). In December 2012, the snow in the Northern hemisphere was at a high extent while there was the sixth utmost snow swathe in January 2013. This was a record made since 1967. There will be a review of the effects of the low ice in the Arctic and the surrounding region.
Research Questions
What is the comparison of the ice in the previous years to the current ice in the Arctic Sea?
To what extent has this ice reduced in the Arctic Sea?
What has been the effect of this reduce ice to the adjacent surroundings of the Arctic Sea?
Over view of conditions
In January 2013, the average sea ice was 14 million kilometers squared. This snow extent was approximately one million kilometers squared below the average of 1979 to 2000. According to the record of satellite, this was the sixth lowest. The satellite record has also had the lowest records for January in the last ten years (Alexeev, Ivanov, Kwok & Smedsrud 26). For the whole of the winter season, ice in Arctic Ocean has been below average. Whereas the Kara Sea was totally iced, almost all the Barents Sea was left free of ice, and there was water available in Northern Svalbard Archipelago. The absence of winter ice in Barents Sea has been a widespread for the past years. Vladimir and his partners from the University of Alaska offer further proof that this relates to a stronger movement of warmer in the Atlantic in comparison to the previous years. Ice edge in Bering Sea maintained to move slightly to the south abnormally on the Pacific side (Alexeev, Ivanov, Kwok & Smedsrud 27).
Additionally, Zhang Jinlin and his mates from the University of Washington made an analysis of the effect of a strong cyclone that occurred in August 2012. Whereas the discovered that there was an intense effect in the instant awakening of the hurricane, the consequence reduced fast, and it only had a tiny effect on the last September effect (Alexeev, Ivanov, Kwok & Smedsrud 28).
Conditions in context
The Arctic got 1.36 square kilometers of ice in the month of January, which was comparatively higher than the month’s average (Alexeev, Ivanov, Kwok & Smedsrud 29). The temperatures of air at approximately 900 hPa altitudes ranged from two to five degrees Celsius more than the mean for the Arctic Ocean. Conditions seem warmer than the average in Svalbard where there was persistence of ice-free situations. Some parts of Northwest Canada and Northern Eurasia experienced temperatures that were below average (Alexeev, Ivanov, Kwok & Smedsrud 29). The prevailing feature for the pressure field of Arctic sea level for January 2013 was an abnormally high pressure in the central Arctic Ocean. This was constant with a leading negative part of Oscillation of the Arctic.
Comparison of January 2013 with the previous years
Satellite record proves that the January 2013 average Arctic Sea extent was the sixth lowly during the month. In the year 2013, the rate of reduction for the ice extent in January was 3.2 percent for every ten years from 1979 (Alexeev, Ivanov, Kwok & Smedsrud 31).
The Northern Hemisphere Snow
As evident in the last post, the snow cover extent in the North for June 2012 was extremely low. This maintained a downward drift in the extent of snow during springtime (Zhang, Lindsay, Schweiger, & Steele 13). Rutgers University satellite information proved that after the snow cover extent of the Northern Hemisphere reached a high record for the month, there was an increased extent during January to an average of forty eight square kilometers (Zhang, Lindsay, Schweiger, & Steele 16). This proved to be the sixth highest extent record for January since 1967. The cover of snow was higher compared to the average in a number of places in the western United States plus eastern China and northern Europe. In central United States, snow cover seemed to be lower than normal and some parts of southern Asia plus Tibetan Plateau.
In Antarctica
In Antarctica, it was noted that January 2013 experienced and abnormal northward expedition of sea ice to the Weddell Sea (Zhang, Lindsay, Schweiger, & Steele 18). The ice was about two hundred and fifty kilometers from its location. Largely, the extent of sea ice in Antarctic was almost 2 standard deviations above average throughout. The source of this abnormal pattern of sea ice seemed to be constant high pressure in the area west of Weddell Sea through the Antarctic Peninsula via the Bellingshausen Sea (Zhang, Lindsay, Schweiger, & Steele 21). The pressure pattern signifies that winds tend to move to the north to the east Peninsula. Therefore, this wind moves ice to the north and introduces cold air from the south and prevents the ice from melting as it moves northwards.
A new Website is inspired by the heavy melting of the Green land surface
In the past years, there has been a high melting rate for the Green land Ice Sheet, although the melting that occurred in 2012 was more than all the years as recorded via satellite (NSIDC 12). This caused a significant loss of large chunks of ice during the year. The new website for NSIDC for Greenland Ice Sheet shows pictures of the extensive melting of ice on the surface of Greenland in the year 2012. The website also has comments on the ice melting breakpoints record during the year.
In the year 2013, the website will show daily update of satellite pictures of ice that is melting on the surface and an intermittent analysis by the NSCDC team of scientists. The team of scientists from NSCDC who are from University of Colorado created the Greenland Ice Sheet with information from Thomas Mote who studies in Georgia University (NSIDC 13).The team also had extensive support from Marco Tedesco, who is from the New York University. The Green land Sheet has an enormous quantity of clean water that if moved to the Ocean, would increase the sea levels with enough water to cause flooding in several coastal regions where people live across the globe. The Ice Sheet usually receives snow in winter and in summer; the ice melts, although there has been a dwindling effect in the past years.
Works Cited
Alexeev, V.A., Ivanov, V.V., Kwok, K., and Smedsrud, L.H.. North Atlantic warming and
declining volume of arctic sea ice. The Cryosphere Discussions. 2013. 7, 245-265, doi:
10.519/tcd-7-245-2013.
Zhang, J., R. Lindsay, A. Schweiger, and M. Steele. The impact of an intense summer
cyclone on 2012 Arctic sea ice retreat. Geophysical Research Letters, In press, 2013. doi:
10.1002/grl.50190.
NSIDC. Scientists provide Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis, with partial support from NASA.
Web. 28 February 2013.
Available at:
<http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/>
