Shrink to record lows near Arctic sea-ice

This summer the Arctic sea-ice is shrinking to its second-lowest in the era of satellite observation.

Last week, the flow was 3.74 million square kilometers. Preliminary data show that it has gone below (1.44 million square miles).

The lowest defeat in the 42-year spacecraft’s record was at the same time as 2012 when packed ice covered 3.41 million square kilometers.

The short autumn days and the excruciating cold mean that now the flow has begun to resume.

• Cozy part of the Greenland ice shelf
• Europe and the U.S. to measure Antarctic sea-ice.

It is common for Arctic sea-ice to expand every winter and then melt again in the summer, but the September minima, like the polar north worms, are getting deeper and deeper.

The downward trend has averaged 13% per decade since satellites began regularly monitoring flows.

Computer models project that summer sea-ice will regularly fall below one million square kilometers after this century.

That’s bad news for the climate. Extensive sea-ice helps cool the Arctic and the rest of the planet. In its absence, more sunlight will be absorbed by the darker surface water of the ocean, which will promote higher temperatures and more loss of ice.

“The way I look at it now is that we will always get low sea-ice; it will never go back, as it did in the 1980s or 1990s,” said Julian Strowie, a professor at the Center for Polar Observations. And modeling (CPOM) at University College London (UCL), UK.

“But whether we get a new record from one year to the next – it really depends a lot on what happens in the summer weather pattern,” he told BBC News.

Twenty-two were notable for some of the late storms that helped break up the snow that had spread to the lows of September. It wasn’t in the twenties, but there were some very hot conditions, especially on the Siberian side of the ocean, which did a lot of talking when it melted in the early season.

Pro. Stroeve spent four-and-a-half months working on ice this past winter, studying the situation with an international team based on the German research ship Polarstern.

The ship had decided to do its own thing by floating with the Floss until October last year, although the Covid-19 crisis resulted in re-shifts and crew-exchange difficulties somewhat disrupted the plan.

CPOM-UCL Scientists examined how spacecraft sensors view ice using Paulstern’s mosaic mission.

• Unprecedented ‘snow loss’ since Greenland broke the record
• Mile Ice Shelf: Satellites capture Arctic ice segments

Of particular interest to him is the radar altimeter which measures the thickness of the flow measuring the height difference between the sea-ice top surface and the sea-ice freeboard.

Satellites such as the European Space Agency’s Chrysot-2 platform can use this observation for depth-ice draft-inf depth of the sunken part of the float and thus, not its 2D extent, but a 3D view of packed ice.

The complication in this approach is taking note of any ice that may be sitting on the ice. This will change the horizon from where the radar measurement signals will return to the satellite.

From Professor Stroeve’s winter experiments, it seems that Aesa’s cryosot mission has a measurable tendency for sea-ice to be thicker than it is.

The space agency, in collaboration with the European Union, is now developing a new spacecraft called Crystal, which will work with two different radar frequencies.

“This will give you the opportunity to regain both the thickness of the ice and the depth of the ice on the same satellite system.

AA announced the award on Monday for a 300m (£ 275m) contract with aerospace maker Airbus to start developing the crystal.

[email protected] And follow me on twitter: BBCMos