Slideshow illustrating global climate issues

Here's a link to a slideshow, from Climate Central, illustrating a week's worth of climate change news. Each slide links to a longer story. The screenshot above is photo of fractures in the sea ice off Canada and Alaska - and the related story explains why the fractures are a problem.

The NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Center) said the fracturing is likely a sign of the prevalence of young and thin sea ice, which can be disturbed more easily by weather patterns and ocean currents, and also melts more easily when exposed to warm air and ocean temperatures during the melt season. As Arctic sea ice extent has plummeted since 1979, down to a record low in September 2012, first-year ice has become much more common across the Arctic, as thick, multiyear ice has declined.

Some of the other stories in the slideshow include NOAA's announcement that February 2013 was the 336th consecutive month in which global temperatures rose above the 20th century average; evidence that wet seasons are wetter and dry seasons dryer, and why the atmosphere has not warmed as much over the last decade as predicted. (No, it's not because global warming isn't happening.)

Arctic Sea Ice Melt

The graph above is the best visual depiction of the extent of the Arctic Sea ice melt I've found. This year, more ice was lost, earlier, than in all the previous years. The illustration shows pretty clearly the difference compared with five years ago and with the 1979-2000 average. The shaded gray area is two standard deviations from that average - and the 2012 line is well below it.

Why does it matter? Well, it's a pretty good sign that the planet is warming, especially, as you can see from the graph, that the loss of ice is also happening earlier in the season. Sea ice is already floating, so it won't raise sea levels. Now forecasters predict that the Arctic Sea will be ice-free in the summer in the next 15 years. And there will likely be other consequences, including further melting of the Greenland ice sheet. And that will raise sea levels. See more details here.

For more information about the extent of the melt, and comparisons with older data, check out the National Snow and Ice Data Center's Arctic Sea Ice page.





Image via: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/