Arctic Shock: NASA Reveals Missing Size of Texan Ice in Record Melt | Science | New



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Ice in the Arctic Sea is growing and decreasing between a minimum and a maximum as the seasons change temperatures. The change in ice cover is being monitored by NASA, the US Space Agency, in collaboration with the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). This year, ice in the Arctic seems to have reached its peak with some of the lowest ice levels ever recorded. According to NASA, the winter maximum for 2019 set a record in 2007 for the smallest amount of Arctic ice recorded by satellites.

The extent of the ice is not the lowest in history, but peaked under the average maximum from 1981 to 2010.

NASA said this year's peak reached 14.78 million square kilometers, or 5.71 million square miles.

And at 860,000 square kilometers (332,000 square miles) below the 1981-2010 average, the Arctic now lacks an area of ​​ice the size of Texas.

NASA said: "The Arctic sea ice cover, a stretch of frozen seawater floating over the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas, thickens and expands during the autumn and winter months.

"The pack ice reaches its maximum extent each year between late February and early April.

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"It decreases and decreases in the spring and summer until it reaches its minimum annual extent in September."

Outside of the natural ice cycle, NASA said that the extent of ice in the Arctic had rapidly fallen during the growing and melting seasons of the past 40 years.

The extent of the ice in 2019 has broken a record series of measurements since 2015, but the space agency said it was not necessarily a sign of recovery.

Melinda Webster, an ice floe scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said, "Although this year has not been as low as ever, the maximum extent of sea ice in winter is still there.

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"Temperatures in the Arctic were a bit higher than average and we saw many ice losses in the Bering Sea, but nothing this winter was as extreme or as dramatic compared recent years and unprecedented lows. "

However, the NSIDC noted that ice extent figures were only preliminary at this stage and that they could still push the maximum higher.

The NSIDC plans to release its final conclusions and a full ice analysis later in April.

The agency will also examine some of the possible causes of ice growth this year.

According to NASA, one of the possible causes is the rise in water temperature in the Arctic in recent decades.

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As the temperature of the water increased, the sea ice floe cleared and damaged the older, much thicker ice, which protected the rest of the ice cover from melting.

Ron Kwok, a sea ice researcher with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said, "The significant changes in ice cover associated with the loss of multi-year pack ice have already occurred.

"Seasonal ice now accounts for a larger fraction of the Arctic sea ice cover.

"Because this young ice is thinner and grows faster in winter, it responds better to weather conditions and makes sea ice cover react differently than before.

"It's not that we will not see new winter or summer records in the next few years, but simply that the variability will be greater."

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