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Tag: arctic ocean

  • Arctic Sea Ice Volume Up 50% This Year

    Arctic Sea Ice Volume Up 50% This Year

    The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced that the volume of Arctic sea ice measured this year is up 50% from the volume measured in 2012. The ESA’s CryoSat satellite measured 9,000 cubic km or sea ice back in October, up from the 6,000 cubic km measured in 2012.

    This new measurement bucks the declining ice measurements measured in the past few consecutive years. According to the ESA most of this year’s increase can be attributed to the growth of “multiyear ice,” or ice that makes it through the summer months without melting. Multiyear ice in 2013 was measured to be around 20% thicker than was measured in 2012.

    “One of the things we’d noticed in our data was that the volume of ice year-to-year was not varying anything like as much as the ice extent – at least in 2010, 2011 and 2012,” said Rachel Tilling, lead author of a new report on the findings and a researcher at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling.

    These multiyear ice measurements, according to the ESA, could be a sign that the Arctic sea ice is “healthy.” However, the report’s authors are also warning that this year’s ice increase does not mean the long-term declining trend in Arctic ice volume has reversed.

    “It’s estimated that there was around 20 000 cubic kilometres of Arctic sea ice each October in the early 1980s, and so today’s minimum still ranks among the lowest of the past 30 years,” said Andrew Shepherd, a co-author of the study and a researcher at University College London.

    (Image courtesy ESA)

  • NASA New Discovery: Microscopic Plants Found in Arctic Waters

    NASA new discovery: In case you were wondering, it’s not space-oriented. No, according to the folks at Space Ref, an expedition to the Arctic Ocean has uncovered an area saturated in microscopic marine plant life, one that’s richer than any other ocean on Earth. ICESCAPE (Impacts of Climate on EcoSystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment) took a good, hard look at the waters around Alaska’s western and northern using optical technology. What they found was nothing short of astounding.

    “Part of NASA’s mission is pioneering scientific discovery, and this is like finding the Amazon rainforest in the middle of the Mojave Desert,” said NASA’s ocean biology and biogeochemistry program manager Paula Bontempi. “We embarked on ICESCAPE to validate our satellite ocean-observing data in an area of the Earth that is very difficult to get to. We wound up making a discovery that hopefully will help researchers and resource managers better understand the Arctic.”

    After drilling a three-feet thick hole into the ice, scientists uncovered phytoplankton, which are the base of all marine life. Originally, authorities on the subject believed these plants grew only after the sun-soaked summer months had thinned the ice. However, thanks to recent shifts in climate, the phytoplankton are thought to grow in areas where they were once absent. The discovery has caused quite a stir.

    “At this point we don’t know whether these rich phytoplankton blooms have been happening in the Arctic for a long time and we just haven’t observed them before,” ICESCAPE mission leader Kevin Arrigo explained. “These blooms could become more widespread in the future, however, if the Arctic sea ice cover continues to thin.”

    The downside: Animals that rely on the plant life for food may miss their opportunity to consume the phytokplankton since these creatures have timed their life cycles around the blooming season. “If their food supply is coming earlier, they might be missing the boat,” Arrigo stated.