Hey look, another record low month for sea ice

Arctic sea ice extent is record low for this time of year and has been since October 2016 with the exception of December (which was still the second-lowest extent on record).
Credit: Zack Labe

Climate Central

Climate change continues its rapid reshaping of the Arctic as yet another month saw sea ice set a record-low mark.

March data just released by the National Snow and Ice Data Center marks six months in a row of near-record or record-low sea ice for the region. It’s a story that’s been reported so often recently, it risks feeling almost normal. But make no mistake. There has never been a run like this in nearly 40 years of satellite data.

Arctic sea ice extent is record low for this time of year and has been since October 2016 with the exception of December (which was still the second-lowest extent on record). Credit: Zack Labe
Arctic sea ice extent is record low for this time of year and has been since October 2016 with the exception of December (which was still the second-lowest extent on record).
Credit: Zack Labe

Sea ice was missing from a 452,000-square-mile area it usually covers in March. That’s an area roughly the size of Sweden. Warm weather was yet again a major culprit in the case of the missing ice.

Temperatures were up to 13°F above normal along Russia’s coastal seas. Incidentally, those areas — particularly the Barents Sea and Sea of Okhotsk — were home to some of the largest sea ice anomalies.

Sea ice thickness is an even more important indicator for the melt season, which is underway after setting a record-low peak in early March (for the third year running, no less).

Just as extent has set a record low in March, so too has thickness, according to data from the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center. NSIDC also reported that ice thinner than 6 feet “covers a much larger region and extends much farther north than it used to — well north of 80°N latitude on the Atlantic side of the Arctic.”

Thin — and generally younger — sea ice is more susceptible to melt than its older, thicker counterpart. Yet young, thin ice is making up an increasingly large portion of Arctic ice pack as climate change whittles away at stores of old ice.

Arctic sea ice thickness is also record low. Credit: Zack Labe
Arctic sea ice thickness is also record low.
Credit: Zack Labe

The Arctic started out winter with a dearth of sea ice. The September minimum was the second lowest on record. Now it’s headed into melt season with record-low ice extent and thickness. It’s much too early to say if the minimum will set a record, but then what’s happening from month-to-month isn’t the most important issue at hand.

This March’s low ice extent and thickness is a symptom of a much larger problem that the region faces. Sea ice has been declining in all seasons at a quickening pace. That’s destabilizing the region, tilting it into a new state.

Among recent findings, researchers have found disappearing sea ice is turning parts of the Arctic Ocean into a state more like the Atlantic, while thinner sea ice is allowing unheard of algae blooms.

That has knock-on effects for the shipping industrymining and oil extraction, coastal protection and a host of problems humans will face if carbon pollution is allowed to continue unabated. That will force temperatures ever higher, causing sea ice to dwindle ever lower.

Source: Climate Central. Reproduced with permission. 

Comments

9 responses to “Hey look, another record low month for sea ice”

  1. caffdan Avatar
    caffdan

    Hopefully I am wrong, but it looks like we at the tipping point now. This could be the beginning of the end

    1. Bungarra Avatar
      Bungarra

      No mate not the “Beginning of the End” but hopefully the ‘Start of some Real Sane Thinking re Humanity and Climate’ by all. Pity about our great grand kids and the Planet.

    2. D. John Hunwick Avatar
      D. John Hunwick

      We will only know when our children and grandchildren look back. People who ignore verifiable scientific findings like polar ice, extinction of species, nitrogen problems, loss of rainforest especially the Amazon, rising sea-levels and increased salinity in the sea are all indications of coming tipping points based largely on climate change. Among those who seem to be taking no notice are the economists.

  2. Treadlie rider Avatar
    Treadlie rider

    Yawn. Just another day in the evolution of a planet that is 4.5 BILLION years old.

    1. Joe Avatar
      Joe

      Evolution maybe but evolution driven by Man and not ‘natural’ influences. How many years have we humans lived as part of that 4.5 Billion. The planet will not be compatible with human habitation as we know it if the warming keeps going and going. But perhaps that is what the planet needs to prosper into the future, a planet without human beings, We wouldn’t be the first species to go extinct but the irony is that it would be all our own doing!

      1. Ren Stimpy Avatar
        Ren Stimpy

        and we’ll take an awful lot of other species with us – along with the ones we’ve already caused to be extinct

    2. RobSa Avatar
      RobSa

      If you leave things in an oven for too long they burn.

    3. DJR96 Avatar
      DJR96

      It would be fine if our influence over the planet was improving the habitability. But it isn’t. Just think of the consequences of the sea levels rising just 1 metre. The effects that would have would be devastating and extremely costly to all society as we know it.

  3. drescaped Avatar
    drescaped

    It is the Antarctic melting that is going to really bite, and if you look pessimistically at the latest literature about land based Antarctic melt you feel that you will see significant sea level changes with your young children.
    Also it is interesting to note that one of your Commentators mention the nitrogen cycle. As the next great disruption to the food industry it is another threat to the large human population that the planet and our technology can’t support.

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