The scientific community has been abuzz with news of the dramatic sea ice retreat witnessed during the northern hemisphere summer in 2007. APRN has run several stories related to polar sea ice retreat and the expected climate, wildlife and cultural changes (linked below). But since a picture is worth 1,000 public radio words, here’s visual documentation of the polar sea ice retreat this year, accompanied by an announcement released by a research arm at the University of Washington.
You can read the full UW announcement and get links to other APRN stories after the jump. And be sure to watch the 42-second animation all the way through — it starts off slowly but accelerates toward the end.
ANNOUNCEMENT FROM PSC, APL at UW:
Given the interest in the rapid retreat of arctic sea ice in summer 2007, the Polar Science Center, Applied Physics Laboratory at University of Washington announces the online availability of a new movie that shows both model-simulated ice thickness and satellite-observed ice extent from June to September 2007.The movie is part of the NSF-funded project, Projections of an Ice-Diminished Arctic Ocean: Retrospection and Future Projection, which aims to (1) examine the historical evolution of the arctic ice-ocean system to understand the large-scale changes that have occurred in seaice and the upper Arctic Ocean, and (2) project a diminished arctic sea-ice cover under multiple warming scenarios to understand key linkages among atmospheric forcing, sea-ice processes, and oceanic processes in an ice-diminished Arctic Ocean and the adjacent seas. The development of the model, the Pan-Arctic ice-ocean modeling and assimilation system, has also been supported by NASA.
MORE FROM APRN:
- Polar sea ice retreat to affect Alaska’s oceans (Oct 4, 2007)
- Global warming effects to wipe out Alaska’s polar bears in 50 years (Sep 7, 2007)
- Retreating Arctic sea ice shifting polar bear denning behaviors (July 12, 2007)
- Disappearing polar sea ice leading toward increasing polar traffic (July 10, 2007)
