Melting ice in the Arctic this summer could break the record of 2012 – RIA Novosti

MOSCOW, April 22 – RIA Novosti. The current rate of reduction of ice area in the Arctic is said that this year the planet is waiting for a new record for the melting of the Arctic polar cap in the summer, which beat the performance of 2012, the press service of the Helmholtz Centre for the Study of the pole and the ocean.

“in many regions of the Arctic ice this winter, featuring a very warm character, was formed very slowly. If we compare the current map the thickness of the ice with what it was in 2012, we will notice that the ice is now in approximately the same condition as the spring four years ago, in some places the ice is even thinner. “- said Marcel Nicolaus (Marcel Nicolaus) of the Helmholtz Centre in Bremerhaven (Germany)

© Photo:. NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio / C Starr

Nikolaus and his colleagues came to this conclusion after analysis of data collected using CyroSat-2 satellite from orbit, a set of snow buoys in the Arctic and measurements carried out on land and in the water off the coast of Spitsbergen island. As shown by monitoring the temperature in February in Svalbard and in other Arctic regions were eight degrees Celsius above normal.

The high temperature as Nikolaus influenced the ice tells an unexpected way. Contrary to NASA projections, they were too low to melt the fresh supplies of ice and snow on the surface of the ice caps, but they are enough to a significant slowdown in the growth of new ice and recovery of polar glaciers since last summer, when the scale of melting slightly fell short of the record in 2012.

“for example, typically the thickness of the ice in the sea north of Alaska is one and a half meters, and our colleagues from the United States reported that the current does not exceed the thickness of a meter. Such thin ice will not last long in the summer Arctic Sun “- adds another climatologist, Stefan Hendricks (Stefan Hendricks), Nikolaus colleague

So far, scientists have no definitive predictions about what will happen in the summer, they note. everything will depend on the weather. However, experts predict the excess of the record of 2012, if the weather is unfavorable. in any case, as emphasized by the scientists, the current summer, most likely, “resets” the increase in the area of ​​ice in the Arctic, which happened due to the relatively cold winters of 2013 and 2014.

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