Gipper, must you always demonstrate that you are such a dumb fuck?
Arctic - Ice extent still well below normal in Arctic
Arctic sea-ice extent in April was probably at a record low for the month, continuing this year’s trend of record or near-record lows, the
National Snow and Ice Data Center said on Tuesday.
Though mechanical glitches have made information from the NSIDC’s satellite temporarily unavailable, other satellite data collected by Japanese and German programs shows Arctic sea ice is much sparser now than it once was at this time of the year.
“We are way, way down on sea ice,” said NSIDC director Mark Serreze. “There’s no indication of any kind of recovery.”
He and his colleagues stopped short of declaring last month a record-low April, because the ice-extent information borrowed from the other programs is produced using a slightly different methodology than that used by the Colorado-based center, making a correlation with U.S. historical data inexact.
However, it is clear April sea ice extent as measured by the Japanese Aeronautical Exploration Agency was the lowest ever for the month in
that program’s record, which goes back a little over a decade, Serreze said.
It was also the lowest in the record kept by a
University of Bremen program, which uses the same Japanese satellite, the NSIDC reported in its
monthly status report.
Sea-ice extent, which grows during the winter and shrinks in the summer, is a much-watched indicator of Arctic climate. In March the ice reached its maximum extent for the year -- the
lowest maximum in the satellite record that dates to 1979. That followed record-low monthly extents
for February and
for January and the
fourth-lowest sea-ice annual minimum, reached last September.
may9-2016.png
