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Thick, Old Arctic Ice Nearly Gone

Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News

The thinner ice that's now dominating the Arctic is more vulnerable to ridging -- the crumpling into ridged rafts of ice -- or melting. Either way you get more open water which can absorb summer sunlight and warm up the Arctic even further.

The key to the new sea ice measurements is data from the laser altimeter onboard NASA's Ice, Cloud and Elevation Satellite (ICE-Sat). Using the altimeter data to measure the different heights of ice floating above the water, the researchers could distinguish between older, thicker perennial ice and younger, thinner perennial ice.

They then applied the new information to almost three decades of data from satellite imagery and drifting buoys, which had been used to estimate ice age. The result was a record of differently-aged perennial ice volumes going back to the early 1980s.

"They had a remarkably high correlation of age and ICE-Sat observation," commented ice researcher Ron Lindsay of the University of Washington in Seattle.

Even better, the changes Maslanik's team sees over the decades seem to mesh with models over the same period, Lindsay told Discovery News.

Related Links:

Larry O'Hanlon's blog: Earth Matters

NASA's Ice, Cloud and Elevation Satellite (ICE-Sat)

How Stuff Works: Why Is Arctic Ice Melting Fast?

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Thick, Old Arctic Ice Nearly Gone

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