Originally posted on sciy.org by Ron Anastasia on Fri 09 Oct 2009 09:09 AM PDT  

(Excerpted from an article on the New York Times website)

October 6, 2009, 11:31 am

Over the Summer, a Spread of Thicker Arctic Ice

The National Snow and Ice Data Center released its summary of summer sea-ice conditions in the Arctic on Tuesday, noting  a substantial expansion of the extent of “second-year ice” — floes thick enough to have persisted through two summers of melting. The result could be a reprieve, at least for a while, from the recent stretch of  remarkable summer meltdowns.

According to the center, second-year ice this summer made up 32 percent of the total ice cover on the Arctic Ocean, compared with 21 percent in 2007 and 9 percent in 2008. The percentage of ice that was many years old, forming thick pancaked expanses, was at its lowest since satellite observations began 30 years ago. But that could change next year as the second-year ice adds mass through the long winter freeze.

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2009 Arctic sea ice minimum

nsidc.org

Figure 1. Arctic sea ice extent for September 2009 was 5.36 million square kilometers (2.07 million square miles), the third-lowest in the satellite record. The magenta line shows the median ice extent for September from 1979 to 2000. Sea Ice Index data . About the data .

Continue on to nsidc.org 

Walt Meier, an ice center scientist, described the situation this way in a statement:

We’ve preserved a fair amount of first-year ice and second-year ice after this summer compared to the past couple of years. If this ice remains in the Arctic through the winter, it will thicken, which gives some hope of stabilizing the ice cover over the next few years. However, the ice is still much younger and thinner than it was in the 1980s, leaving it vulnerable to melt during the summer.

(Article continues at link below.)

This article is excerpted from the New York Times | International Herald Tribune Global Edition website: https://global.nytimes.com/

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