14 DAY TRIAL // With the melting season for the Arctic over, experts at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) have released their report on the situation, and things do not look good.
The area around the North Pole reached its minimum extent – the period of largest melt – on September 19. Measurements indicate that 2010 saw the third lowest ice extent since satellites have been surveying the area.
The conclusions are disastrous, and indicate that few efforts we are currently taking to safeguard the planet are not having any major effects on the situation.
NSIDC experts say that both the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route were opened from some time during last month, which normally shouldn't happen.
The lowest monthly extent in the satellite record was registered in September 2007, when the Arctic had only 4.30 million square kilometers of ice.
The level for September 2010 was 4.90 million square kilometers (1.89 million square miles), and this level is 2.14 million square kilometers (830,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average.
As far as sea surface temperatures go, this season was warmer than normal for most areas of the Arctic Ocean, say investigators from the University of Washington.
The researchers say that the higher temperatures were mostly due to the extensive ice loss, which exposed more of the dark, cool water to sunlight. This caused more water to get heat up.
Another worrying conclusion of the report has to do with the amount of ice in the Arctic that can be considered multi-annual ice, and which melts slower than seasonal ice.
At this point, it is estimated that only 15 percent of the entire ice cap above the North Pole is made up of ice that has been deposited more than two years ago.
During the 1980s, this percentage was as high as 50 to 60%. Today, less than 60,000 square kilometers (23,000 square miles) of the Arctic is made up of ice older than five years.
“Whether younger multiyear ice (two or three years old) in the Arctic Ocean will continue to age and thicken depends on two things,” a NSIDC press release reads.
“First, how much of that ice stays in the Arctic instead of exiting into the North Atlantic through Fram Strait; and second, whether the ice survives its transit across the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas or instead melts away,” the document adds.