Arctic sea ice coverage continued its below-average trend this year as the ice declined to its annual minimum on Sept. 17, according to the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Over the 2014 summer, Arctic sea ice melted back from its maximum extent reached in March to a coverage area of 1.94 million square miles (5.02 million square kilometers), according to analysis from NASA and NSIDC scientists. This year's minimum extent is similar to last year's and below the 1981-2010 average of 2.40 million square miles (6.22 million square km).
"Arctic sea ice coverage in 2014 is the sixth lowest recorded since 1978. The summer started off relatively cool, and lacked the big storms or persistent winds that can break up ice and increase melting," said Walter Meier, a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
"Even with a relatively cool year, the ice is so much thinner than it used to be," Meier said. "It's more susceptible to melting."
This summer, the Northwest Passage above Canada and Alaska remained ice-bound. A finger of open water stretched north of Siberia in the Laptev Sea, reaching beyond 85 degrees north, which is the farthest north open ocean has reached since the late 1970s, according to Meier.
While summer sea ice has covered more of the Arctic in the last two years than in 2012's record low summer, this is not an indication that the Arctic is returning to average conditions, Meier said. This year's minimum extent remains in line with a downward trend; the Arctic Ocean is losing about 13 percent of its sea ice per decade.
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As this trend continues (and it will continue) as we continue to rapaciously burn fossil fuels thinking we can still do so because we are putting up a few solar panels as if that alone even properly addresses the moral dilemma we face with our addiction- we will see the results of our folly coming full circle within the next 15 years. This is why I scoff at the UN and governments that send their so called "leaders" to speak and speechify telling us about the urgent crisis we face- and then putting forth meager mediocre political measures that do not come close to addressing this crisis.
I could not even begin to document all of the extreme events that have happened globally even within the last month. 450 villages under water in Pakistan/Kashmir. Floods in Spain, Greece, China, Denmark, Australia, Serbia again, (Video here: Serbia flood,the US... severe drought in Central America, Africa, the US with extremes felt on every continent. Heatwaves and floods more severe, more prevalent and daily. World Heritage sites under threat, forests on fire (Amazon fires burning due to deforestation seen from space.) To say we have not passed a tipping point is to be in the deepest denial a human can engage in.
The Arctic is not waiting for politics to catch up with science and for humans on the whole to get beyond their pettiness.
CO2 Emissions Set To Reach New 40 Billion Ton Record High in 2014
You want to continue playing politics with this? You want to continue denying what is happening right in front of your eyes? You want to keep looking at this as only an economic opportunity for a chosen few as opposed to a moral threat to our existence? Well, we don't have anymore time for any of that. The Arctic IS melting. It IS affecting jet stream patterns that are affecting weather events and making them more extreme. The ice IS getting thinner. It is opening up more ocean which is then precipitating more positive feed-backs which increase temperature and moisture in our atmosphere. There is no more time to waste on the art of persuasion on the few who will never change their views.
This is a direct threat to our global water supply (California now knows this well as whole towns are now waterless) as well which then effects agriculture which then effects our ability to survive. We have already set ourselves up to see a 2 -4 degree centigrade rise in temperature by century's end. That will render Earth uninhabitable for humans and many other species.
But hey, I'll post the next report as well and post more pictures and speak more truth about this as politicians, NGOs and AGW deniers who seem to want to do nothing but go at each other continue the bread and circuses routine while getting in their speeches and photo ops continuing to argue and speechify us into non existence thinking money is the only way to solve anything.
This Is What Addiction Looks Like
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Also see:
Arctic Ice Extent Fifth Lowest On Record
Arctic Ocean Leaking Methane At Alarming Rate
Arctic Ice, Oceans, Climate and the Human Condition
Arctic Melting-Tipping Point That Should Matter To All Of Us
And:
Arctic Sea Ice Decline
"In the Arctic, temperature has increased at twice the rate as the rest of the globe, and could increase by another 8°C (14°F) by the end of this century. The warming atmosphere along with new weather pattern extremes is causing Arctic sea ice to melt at an alarming rate—12% per decade—that suggests the Arctic will be ice-free by 2030. The impacts of dwindling ice cover in the Arctic are far-reaching, from species endangerment to enhanced global warming, to the weakening or shut-down of global ocean circulation."
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Earth Surface During August 2014 Was Hottest Ever Recorded
All I can is, it is going to be a hard fall for humanity.
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