Saturday, July 9, 2016

Climate Models predict no ice eventually in arctic late summers within decades

While the North Pole sits in an ocean surrounded by land, the South Pole is in a continent surrounded by water. Antarctic sea ice grows outward from the coast, aided by the isolating winds that encircle the continent and carry frigid, inland air that pushes the ice around. So even as warmer water reaches under the floating ice shelves of Antarctica’s glaciers, persistently eating away at them, the growth of winter sea ice is more closely tied to wind patterns.
Climate models project a big decline in Arctic sea ice, with the end of summer becoming essentially sea-ice-free within a few decades at the current rate of warming. But in Antarctica, the models project smaller long-term declines.
In reality, Arctic sea ice extent has so far dropped faster than the model projections. Antarctic sea ice, however, has grown a bit since satellite monitoring started in 1979 (though not by enough to offset the Arctic loss). Between 2000 and 2014, that growth picked up speed—the same time period over which the growth in global average surface temperatures temporarily slowed due to a series of La NiƱa years in the Pacific.
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