> On May 19, 10:31 pm, "V-for-Vendicar"
> <Just...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> "John M." <john_howard_mor...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote
>>
>> > Despite the colder N. Hemisphere winter, the Arctic sea ice coverage
>> > is yesterday (May 18th) virtually identical to this time last year.
>>
>> MMMMMMMMMOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNN
>>
>> Ominous Arctic melt worries experts
>> -----------------------------------
>> - SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer - Dec 9 2007
>>
>> WA****NGTON - An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly
>> accelerated
>> this summer,
"John M." <john_howard_morgan@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote
> HINT: The month of December is at the beginning of the northern
> winter, the month of May occurs in the spring. You really ought to
> start reading stuff before you post.
John M. is illiterate apparently. Unable to understand that the phrase
"this summer" uttered in 2007 refers to the summer of 2007.
IIIIIIDDDDDDDDDIIIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOTTTTTTTTTTTTT
Arctic ice melting at record rate: scientists Fri Dec 14, 12:05 AM ET
WA****NGTON (AFP) - The arctic ice cap melted at an unprecedented rate in
mid-2007, losing an area of ice the size of the state of Alaska, US
scientists
said at a conference this week.
"The average rate of loss of sea ice every summer year to year up to 2006
was
equal to an area the size of West Virginia," or about 62,800 square
kilometers
(24,250 square miles), said Michael Steele, the senior oceanographer at
the
University of Wa****ngton in Seattle.
However the decrease in ice between 2006 and 2007 "was almost equivalent
to
the
area of Alaska," or some 1.7 million kilometers (more than 663,000 square
miles), Steele told AFP in a telephone interview.
"It was a huge retreat," said Steele, one of the researchers who discussed
the
subject at the annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in San
Francisco, California.
The arctic ice cap currently covers around 4.13 million square kilometers,
its
smallest surface in modern times, said another conference speaker, Wieslaw
Maslowski, an oceanographer at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey,
California.
The Arctic Ocean could thus be completely ice-free during the three summer
months by 2013, Maslowski said at the conference.
Steele refused to make the same prediction, but did say that the Arctic
Ocean
has never been as hot during the summer months.
"The ocean warmed up at temperatures never seen before ... it was five
degrees
Celsius warmer than average," said Steele. "It's very large."
In arctic areas usually covered by ice "the temperature was maybe two or
three
degrees warmer than the average." And in Alaska the temperature was
unusually
high -- between 12 and 13 degrees Centigrade. "We never saw that before,"
he
said.
Steele based his research on records over the past 100 years as well as
measurements taken with instruments in the field. More recently he has
also
used
data from NASA satellites.
Other scientists at the AGU conference said the Arctic Ocean's heating was
self-sustained, with warmer water from the Atlantic and Pacific heading
north
and accelerating the melting of the ice caps.
Global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions produced by humans "is
basically
responsible for the ice getting thinner and thinner," said Steele.
"And when it gets thinner, the ice becomes more vulnerable to wind that
can
blow
it away from Alaska and eastern Siberia. It's also more vulnerable to the
unusual summer time melting -- if you have thick ice that melts a little
bit,
it's still there, (but) when it's thin it melts completely away."
"It's just a fact that the ice is going away and the ocean can absorb the
sunlight," Steele said. With less ice to reflect the sunlight, the ocean
absorbs
the sun's heat, warms up and furthers the melting process.
"I don't know what the future holds, but most arctic scientists think that
is
not getting much better," he said.
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