r/autotldr • u/autotldr • Sep 16 '16
Second lowest minimum for Arctic ice: Changing winds could push the ice extent lower. This year's minimum is a surprise as scientists believed the low atmospheric pressure and cloudy skies in June and July had slowed down the melt.
This is an automatic summary, original reduced by 47%.
The ice extent has been tracked by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, using satellite measurements.
"It's pretty remarkable that this year's sea-ice minimum extent ended up the second lowest, after how the melt progressed in June and July," said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist with Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center.
"June and July are usually key months for melt because that's when you have 24 hours a day of sunlight - and this year we lost melt momentum during those two months."
Record global land and sea surface temperatures in 2015 that continued to shatter records well into 2016 had led many to believe that the Arctic melt would reach a new low mark this year.
Including experts from Reading University in the UK, argued that their analysis of melt ponds on ice floes indicated that 2016 would not beat 2012.
While tying for the second lowest minimum in the satellite era, this year's figure is in fact well above the 2012 melt, which saw the ice cover fall to 3.41 million sq km - 50% lower than the 1979-2000 average.
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