File:2008 Arctic Sea Ice Minimum - 1280x720 (3086476374).jpg
Original file (1,280 × 720 pixels, file size: 371 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)
Captions
Summary[edit]
Description2008 Arctic Sea Ice Minimum - 1280x720 (3086476374).jpg |
Courtesy NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / Scientific Visualization Studio Original/Full Rez Available: <a href="http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003563/index.html" rel="noreferrer nofollow">svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003563/index.html</a> The continued significant reduction in the extent of the summer sea ice cover is a dramatic illustration of the pronounced impact increased global temperatures are having on the Arctic regions. There has also been a significant reduction in the relative amount of older, thicker ice. Satellite-based passive microwave images of the sea ice cover have provided a reliable tool for continuously monitoring changes in the extent of the Arctic ice cover since 1979. During 2008 the summer minimum ice extent, observed in September, reached 4.7 million km2. While slightly above the record minimum of 4.3 million km2, set just a year earlier in September 2007, the 2008 summer minimum further reinforces the strong negative trend in summertime ice extent observed over the past thirty years. At the record minimum in 2007, extent of the sea ice cover was 39% below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000. A longer time series of sea ice extent, derived primarily from operational sea ice charts produced by national ice centers, suggests that the 2007 September ice extent was 50% lower than conditions in the 1950s to the 1970s (Stroeve et al. 2008). The spatial pattern of the 2008 minimum extent was different than in 2007. The annual maximum sea ice extent typically occurs in March. In March 2008, the maximum ice extent was 15.2 million km2. This marked a second year of slight recovery in winter ice extent from the record minimum of 14.4 million km2 for the period 1979–2008, which was observed in 2006. For comparison, the mean monthly ice extent for March and September, for the period 1979–2008, is 15.6 and 6.7 million km2, respectively. The Arctic sea ice cover is composed of perennial ice (the ice that survives year-round) and seasonal ice (the ice that melts during the summer). Consistent with the diminishing trends in the extent and thickness of the cover is a significant loss of the older, thicker perennial ice in the Arctic. Data from the NASA QuikSCAT launched in 1999 (Nghiem et al., 2007) and a buoy-based Drift-Age Model (Rigor and Wallace, 2004) indicate that the amount of perennial ice in the March ice cover has decreased from approximately 5.5 to 3.0 million km2 over the period 1958–2007. While there is considerable interannual variability, an overall downward trend in the amount of perennial ice began in the early 1970s. This trend appears to coincide with a general increase in the Arctic-wide, annually averaged surface air temperature, which also begins around 1970. In recent years, the rate of reduction in the amount of older, thicker perennial ice has been increasing, and now very little ice older than 5 yr remains (Maslanik et al. 2007). |
Date | |
Source | 2008 Arctic Sea Ice Minimum - 1280x720 |
Author | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt, MD, USA |
Licensing[edit]
- You are free:
- to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
- to remix – to adapt the work
- Under the following conditions:
- attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
This image, originally posted to Flickr, was reviewed on 20 January 2023 by the administrator or reviewer Abzeronow, who confirmed that it was available on Flickr under the stated license on that date. |
This media file is uncategorized.
Please help improve this media file by adding it to one or more categories, so it may be associated with related media files (how?), and so that it can be more easily found.
Please notify the uploader with {{subst:Please link images|File:2008 Arctic Sea Ice Minimum - 1280x720 (3086476374).jpg}} ~~~~ |
File history
Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.
Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
current | 12:05, 19 December 2021 | 1,280 × 720 (371 KB) | Siloepic (talk | contribs) | Transferred from Flickr via #flickr2commons |
You cannot overwrite this file.
File usage on Commons
There are no pages that use this file.