Barely 5% Of Arctic Basin's Oldest, Thickest Sea Ice Survived Melt Season Of 2011

[hatrack]

The Arctic's oldest, thickest sea ice — much of which used to survive the year's warmest months — had all but disappeared by the end of this summer's near-record meltdown, according to new U.S. analyses that vividly show how the circumpolar region is being transformed by warmer temperatures and other features of climate change.

In reports issued this week by NASA and the associated National Snow and Ice Data Center, the respective teams of U.S. scientists offered end-of-season overviews of the state of the northern cryosphere that emphasized not only the severe shrinkage of the ice cover for the fifth straight year, but also the widespread replacement of the Arctic's most mature ice masses by much younger, thinner and weaker sheets of ice.

The trend — reinforced by this year's loss of about 50 per cent of Canada's rapidly vanishing, millennia-old Arctic ice shelves along the coast of Ellesmere Island — continues to suggest the likelihood of ice-free Arctic summers in the coming decades, the experts say. "The oldest, thickest ice (five or more years old), has continued to decline," states the report from the Colorado-based NSIDC, which points to the Beaufort Sea north of the Yukon-Alaska boundary as a prime area for the loss of old-growth ice. "In essence, what was once a refuge for older ice has become a graveyard."

EDIT

NSIDC data released this week shows that while more than 30 per cent of the Arctic's oldest ice survived the summer of 1983, barely five per cent survived the summer of 2011.

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Climate%20change%20eradicating%20Arctic%20oldest/5507384/story.html

[Odin2005]

1. This is bad, REALLY bad!

:scared:

[Viking12]

2. What? A whole hour and the denier posse hasn't been here to spread their Santorum?

"but, but, but 250 million years ago, it was a tropical zone"...or..."ice has been melting for 20,000 years, big deal"

[Gregorian]

3. Habits are still not changing.

Where there are cars, there could be bikes. Where there are people on planes, maybe they could entertain themselves some other way. Man, there is no way to discuss how to change this situation that isn't going to be irritating to people. So I'm prepared to watch the planet melt. But it would be nice to responsibly alter our ways in order to avoid it.

[Nihil]

4. Some are ... just not enough (and the rate of change is way too low)

The big trouble is that the major players in this casino have decided
to go all in so that they can die with the most chips, despite the
fact that so many of the minor players have willingly folded so that
they can fight the fire that's blazing through the building ...

[XemaSab]

5. We're kidding ourselves if we think that this can be stopped

by individual action. It's going to take government action and corporate action, and changing a light bulb in your house isn't even the tip of the iceberg.

Problems created by a consumer society cannot be solved with a consumer response.

[Viking12]

6. Well stated.

The potential impact of committed individuals is severely constrained by the social, political and economic structures in place. Those institutions can only be changed through collective action. However, that doesn't negate the role individuals can play. One of my favorite essays. EVER. is Vaclav Havel's http://vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat=eseje&val=2_aj_eseje.html&typ=HTML">The Power of the Powerless which lays out the possibilities of change driven by Refusals to participate in the structures.

[truebrit71]

7. Bloody hell....I said earlier in the year that the projections of an ice-free Arctic by 2030...

...were wildly optimistic and we would most likely see that happen in THIS decade....I had no idea it could be in the next couple of years though...