Science Daily - Arctic Ice Extent May Be Down By 50% Since 1950s - Now Falling At 10%/Decade

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The average sea ice extent for the month of September was 1.65 million square miles (4.28 million square kilometers), the lowest September on record, shattering the previous record for the month by 23 percent, which was set in 2005. At the end of the melt season, September 2007 sea ice was 39 percent below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000. If ship and aircraft records from before the satellite era are taken into account, sea ice may have fallen by as much as 50 percent from the 1950s. The September rate of sea ice decline since 1979 is now more than 10 percent per decade, said the CU-Boulder research team.

NSIDC is part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Arctic sea ice has long been recognized as a sensitive climate indicator, said CU-Boulder Research Professor Mark Serreze of CIRES and NSIDC. "Computer projections have consistently shown that as global temperatures rise, the sea ice cover will begin to shrink," he said. "While a number of natural factors have certainly contributed to the overall decline in sea ice, the effects of greenhouse warming are now coming through loud and clear."

One factor that contributed to this fall's extreme decline was that the ice was entering the melt season in an already weakened state, said CIRES Research Associate Julienne Stroeve of NSIDC. "The spring of 2007 started out with less ice than normal, as well as thinner ice. Thinner ice takes less energy to melt than thicker ice, so the stage was set for low levels of sea ice this summer." Another factor that conspired to accelerate the ice loss this summer was an unusual atmospheric pattern, with persistent high atmospheric pressures over the central Arctic Ocean and lower pressures over Siberia. The scientists noted that skies were fairly clear under the high-pressure cell, promoting strong melt.

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071001160655.htm

However, I don't know if cute cartoon mice are going to do the trick for this one . . .

"The new NASA study of expelled old ice builds on previous measurements showing that the proportion of thick, durable floes that were at least 10 years old dropped to 2 percent this spring from 80 percent in the spring of 1987, said Ignatius G. Rigor, an ice expert at the University of Washington and an author of the new NASA-led study."

BTW isn't Ignatius Rigor an awesome name? :D

but an exponential one. Like this:



That last 50% is gonna go in another decade.