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For scientists studying the health of Arctic sea ice, satellite observations are absolutely essential for providing the big picture. It was satellites that revealed in September 2007 a record minimum ice coverage in the region - the result of a massive summer melt. And it was satellites that showed in 2008...
In short, as Barber and his colleagues explain in a recent paper in Geophysical Review Letters, the analysis of what the satellites were seeing was wrong. Some of what satellites identified as thick, melt-resistant multiyear ice turned out to be, in Barber's words, "full of holes, like Swiss...
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...
This suggests that the analysis of satellite observations might be due for updating. "The algorithms we use to monitor ice 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...
Exactly when a catastrophic melt might occur, however, is unpredictable. The long-term rise in global temperature as a result of greenhouse-gas emissions is overlaid with natural, year-to-year variability in all sorts of interconnected oceanic and atmospheric cycles that slow down warming down or speed it up...