Word: arctics
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...scientists feared the record-thin Arctic ice cover might melt away. But it didn't, because of unusually favorable ocean currents and weather patterns. "Early in the 2009 season it looked like we might be on the way to a record melt," says Julienne Stroeve, a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, in Boulder, Colo., "but then winds spread the ice out, so the overall coverage ended up being greater than in 2007." Without those winds, in other words, 2009 might have set a new record for open water. But as it happened, ice cover...
What Barber's expedition further discovered was that some Arctic sea ice is not only whisper thin, but that even in places with thick ice, the ice was not as solid as satellites had indicated. That thick ice was still there, but largely as individual chunks covered with a veneer of new ice that masked their true nature. "It's significant and it's surprising," says Maslanik. "I wouldn't have expected that the ice would be as rotten and weak as what David Barber's team found...
...extent were developed a long time ago," says Stroeve, "based on what 'typical' ice looked like at that time. We know there are errors with the measurements." The weakness in multiyear ice also suggests that if the unfavorable winds and currents that caused the 2007 meltback should recur, the Arctic Ocean could undergo another especially dramatic summer melt. Not just the first-year ice might go, but also some of the "rotten" multiyear ice that Barber encountered...
...atmospheric cycles that slow down warming down or speed it up temporarily. But because these variations tend to be cyclical, the "perfect storm" of conditions that caused the record 2007 melting - a situation Stroeve calls "unusual, but not unprecedented" - will probably return at some point. If they do, the Arctic could be primed for major, even irreversible, changes...
...case of the mistake about the Himalayan glaciers, some glaciologists have said they knew about the error and tried to alert the IPCC before publication, but were unable to get it fixed. There will inevitably be improvement as the IPCC moves forward, says Bob Corell, a scientist with the Arctic Governance Project and the Global Environment and Technology Foundation. Each time it gets better...