area and volume

[Old Rocks]

BBC News - Cryosat mission's new views of polar ice

 

[Old Rocks]

ESA - Living Planet Programme - CryoSat-2

Call for Media: CryoSat’s first map of changes in sea-ice thickness


18 April 2012
Media representatives are invited to attend the unveiling of the first map of the winter 2010–11 changes in Arctic sea-ice thickness measured by ESA’s ice mission. The event will take place on 24 April at the Royal Society in London.

Launched in April 2010, CryoSat’s main objective is to measure the thickness of polar sea-ice and monitor changes in the ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica.
In June 2011, the first map of Arctic sea-ice thickness was unveiled. Now, the complete 2010–11 winter season data have been processed to produce the first seasonal variation map of sea-ice thickness

 

[Old Rocks]

Study finds thickest parts of Arctic ice cap melting faster

The most visible change in the Arctic region in recent years has been the rapid decline of the perennial ice cover. The perennial ice is the portion of the sea ice floating on the surface of the ocean that survives the summer. This ice that spans multiple years represents the thickest component of the sea ice cover. This visualization shows the perennial Arctic sea ice from 1980 to 2012. The grey disk at the North Pole indicates the region where no satellite data is collected. A graph overlay shows the area's size measured in million square kilometers for each year. The '1980','2008', and '2012' data points are highlighted on the graph. Credit: NASA
The new research takes a closer look at how multi-year ice, ice that has made it through at least two summers, has diminished with each passing winter over the last three decades. Multi-year ice "extent" – which includes all areas of the Arctic Ocean where multi-year ice covers at least 15 percent of the ocean surface – is diminishing at a rate of -15.1 percent per decade, the study found.