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North Pole: Arctic Sea Ice Decline

The document discusses the polar ice caps at the North and South Poles. At the North Pole, sea ice covers the Arctic Ocean and ranges from 1-4 meters thick, with areas up to 20 meters thick. The area covered by Arctic sea ice has decreased by around 4.2% per decade since 1979 and the average ice coverage has declined from 8 million km2 to 5 million km2 over that period. At the South Pole, Antarctica is covered by an ice sheet around 14.6 million km2 containing 25-30 million km3 of ice, which holds around 70% of the world's fresh water. Data shows that Antarctic sea ice coverage has had a slightly positive trend over the last three decades.

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Ionita Gabriel
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33 views2 pages

North Pole: Arctic Sea Ice Decline

The document discusses the polar ice caps at the North and South Poles. At the North Pole, sea ice covers the Arctic Ocean and ranges from 1-4 meters thick, with areas up to 20 meters thick. The area covered by Arctic sea ice has decreased by around 4.2% per decade since 1979 and the average ice coverage has declined from 8 million km2 to 5 million km2 over that period. At the South Pole, Antarctica is covered by an ice sheet around 14.6 million km2 containing 25-30 million km3 of ice, which holds around 70% of the world's fresh water. Data shows that Antarctic sea ice coverage has had a slightly positive trend over the last three decades.

Uploaded by

Ionita Gabriel
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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North Pole[edit]

See also: Arctic sea ice decline

Earth's North Pole is covered by floating pack ice (sea ice) over the Arctic Ocean. Portions of the ice
that do not melt seasonally can get very thick, up to 3–4 meters thick over large areas, with ridges
up to 20 meters thick. One-year ice is usually about 1 meter thick. The area covered by sea ice
ranges between 9 and 12 million km2. In addition, the Greenland ice sheet covers about 1.71 million
km2 and contains about 2.6 million km³ of ice. When the ice breaks off (calves) it forms icebergs
scattered around the northern Atlantic.[2]
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, "since 1979, winter Arctic ice extent has
decreased about 4.2 percent per decade". Both 2008 and 2009 had a minimum Arctic sea ice extent
somewhat above that of 2007. At other times of the year the ice extent is still sometimes near the
1979–2000 average, as in April 2010, by the data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
[3]
 Still, between these same years, the overall average ice coverage appears to have declined from 8
million km2 to 5 million km2.

South Pole[edit]
See also: Climate of Antarctica

A satellite composite image of Antarctica

Earth's south polar land mass, Antarctica, is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet. It covers an area of


about 14.6 million km2 and contains between 25 and 30 million km3 of ice. Around 70% of the fresh
water on Earth is contained in this ice sheet.
Data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center shows that the sea ice coverage of Antarctica has
a slightly positive trend over the last three decades (1979–2009). [4]

Historical cases[edit]
Over the past several decades, Earth's polar ice caps have gained significant attention because of
the alarming decrease in land and sea ice. NASA reports that since the late 1970s, the Arctic has
lost an average of 20,800 square miles (53,900 square kilometers) of sea ice per year while
the Antarctic has gained an average of 7,300 square miles (18,900 km2) of sea ice per year. At the
same time, the Arctic has been losing around 50 cubic kilometers (gigatons) of land ice per year,
almost entirely from Greenland's 2.6 million gigaton sheet. On 19 September 2014, for the first time
since 1979, Antarctic sea ice extent exceeded 7.72 million square miles (20 million square
kilometers), according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The ice extent stayed above this
benchmark extent for several days. The average maximum extent between 1981 and 2010 was 7.23
million square miles (18.72 million square kilometers). The single-day maximum extent in 2014 was
reached on 20 Sep, according to NSIDC data, when the sea ice covered 7.78 million square miles
(20.14 million square kilometers). The 2014 five-day average maximum was reached on 22 Sep,
when sea ice covered 7.76 million square miles (20.11 million square kilometers), according
to NSIDC.[5]
The current rate of decline of the ice caps has caused many investigations and discoveries on
glacier dynamics and their influence on the world's climate. In the early 1950s, scientists and
engineers from the US Army began drilling into polar ice caps for geological insight. These studies
resulted in “nearly forty years of research experience and achievements in deep polar ice
core drillings... and established the fundamental drilling technology for retrieving deep ice cores for
climatologic archives.” [6] Polar ice caps have been used to track current climate patterns but also
patterns over the past several thousands years from the traces of CO2 and CH4 found trapped in the
ice. In the past decade, polar ice caps have shown their most rapid decline in size with no true sign
of recovery.[7] Josefino Comiso, a senior research scientist at NASA, found that the “rate of warming
in the Arctic over the last 20 years is eight times the rate of warming over the last 100 years.” [8] In
September 2012, sea ice reached its smallest size ever. Journalist John Vidal stated that sea ice is
"700,000 sq km below the previous minimum of 4.17m sq km set in 2007". [9] In August 2013, Arctic
sea ice extent averaged 6.09m km2, which represents 1.13 million km2 below the 1981–2010
average for that month.[10]

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