Esri News Feed

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Cool Geo-Pic: "Net-net" Global Sea Ice is Shrinking

Today's cool geo-pic is again from NASA's Earth Observatory. It provides a "net-net" comparison of polar ice loss, and comes to the conclusion that global sea ice is still shrinking.

"Cut & Paste" Highlights:
"....Examining 35 years of sea ice data, Parkinson has shown that increases around Antarctica do not make up for the accelerated Arctic sea ice loss of the last decades. Earth has been shedding sea ice at an average annual rate of 35,000 square kilometers (13,500 square miles) since 1979—the equivalent of losing an area of sea ice larger than the state of Maryland every year...."



.... “Even though Antarctic sea ice reached a new record maximum in September 2014, global sea ice is still decreasing,” said Parkinson, who is based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “That’s because the decreases in Arctic sea ice far exceed the increases in Antarctic sea ice.....”

".....The line graphs above plot the monthly deviations and overall trends in polar sea ice from 1979 to 2013 as measured by satellites. The top line shows the Arctic, the middle shows Antarctica, and the third line shows the global, combined total. The sparklines at the bottom of the graphs show each year separately, enabling month-to-month comparisons across each year. The thickness of each sparkline indicates the overall growth or loss in sea ice globally. The thinning of the sparklines is indicative of the downward trend in total polar sea ice......"



Full Article:  Despite Antarctic Gains, Global Sea Ice Is Shrinking February 11, 2015
 Click Here

References:
Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens. Caption by Maria-Jose ViƱas and Mike Carlowicz.
Instrument(s): DMSP - SSM/I

No comments: