"Cool" animation shows arctic ice loss
The northern summer of 2007 saw more open water around the North Pole than ever before. The record loss of sea ice is a worry not just to polar bears and seals, but also to those concerned about global warming. The less ice, the less sunlight reflected back into space, and that means 
more solar energy absorbed by the Arctic Ocean. And that just reinforces the warming of the northern ocean, which has an impact globally - like switching off the planet's icebox.
Scientists have been watching the annual melt as an indicator of global climate change. Although the melting offers the prospect of commercial shipping in summer through the fabled Northwest Passage, the loss of "permanent" year-round sea ice is worrisome to many.
And after last year's record melt, scientists were eager to see whether 2008 would exceed that mark. It didn't, although it came close. Here's more from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. And the pace of the melt during August did set a new record.
Anyway, scientists at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Scientific Visualization Studio have assembled an animation of the 2008 melting season as recorded by polar satellites. It's fascinating. Have a look.
Here's more from Goddard.
Comments
Its call summer melt, it happens every year. Go look here > http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=09&fd=12&fy=2008&sm=10&sd=12&sy=2008
It will tell you all the real ice sheets growth with facts, not models that don’t work. It's about time you silly greenies wake up and realize it's the suns activity and inactivity that is the biggest factor in climate change. Temperature have been dipping for 11 years now and the heat gains before, have been at 100 year low in ONE year and the ice sheets are weeks ahead of growth this year. 6 years Argo units show a cooling of oceans and 18 years of the Ulysses explorer mapping our solar system saying that the sun is getting quieter(cooler, inactive) and the last time we had this inactivity it was right before the little ice age a few hundred years ago.
So stop fighting imaginary problems. Go look at real data and stop listening to climate modelers that has been debunked for at least 10 years, a science that will soon go the way of flat earth sciences. Get a grip, stop deforesting, and dumping toxins into our oceans and land fills, that’s real.
But there is no greenhouse gas build up of CO2 in our atmosphere, there never was. CO2 is twice as heavy as air, it doesn’t go up into the atmosphere and build up, and gases that do meet up are gone/ mixed with gasses and debris coming in from our sun and galaxy. Creating…. You guessed it”CO2”( chlorine, Ozone, Nitrous oxide, etc.) and salt, go look up how a rain drop is formed. It needs salt to form and salt can not get into the air from condensation or evaporation, 0.
Posted by: Lance Lamont | October 20, 2008 4:44 PM