Big Ice Loss In The Arctic BUT ....

ANTARCTIC ICE RECORD revealed by NASA Earth Observatory, 11 October 2012. The recent record decrease in sea ice in Arctic Ocean has received widespread publicity, but at the other end of the world there was also a sea ice record being set. NASA reports: “Two weeks after a new record was set in the Arctic Ocean for the least amount of sea ice coverage in the satellite record, the ice surrounding Antarctica reached its annual winter maximum—and set a record for a new high. Sea ice extended over 19.44 million square kilometers (7.51 million square miles) in 2012, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The previous record of 19.39 million kilometers (7.49 million square miles) was set in 2006”. The article is accompanied by a map of the ice surrounding the Antarctic continent September 26, 2012, “when ice covered more of the Southern Ocean than at any other time in the satellite record”. Satellite images of the Arctic and Antarctic regions have been used since 1979 to monitor the amount of sea ice and over that period there has been a downward trend in Arctic ice, but an upward trend in Antarctic ice. The increase is not evenly distributed around Antarctica with some areas gaining ice and others losing it. Sea ice scientists Claire Parkinson and Donald Cavalieri of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center commented in an article in The Cryosphere, 6, 871-880, 2012: “The strong pattern of decreasing ice coverage in the Bellingshausen/Amundsen Seas region and increasing ice coverage in the Ross Sea region is suggestive of changes in atmospheric circulation”.

Links: NASA, The Cryosphere Creation Research.