|
|
"You were left with this dark water which can absorb a lot more sunlight, whereas before you had a bright surface that just would have reflected it," Kay said. The warmer waters can then melt more ice from below or along the edges. "The lack of clouds helped facilitate these classic feedbacks having to do with the brightness of sea ice," she added. The teams findings were published today in Geophysical Research Letters. The weather patterns that created the especially sunny weather are probably just part of the natural variability in Arctic weather, Kay said, but other years have seen even lower cloud cover without the same effect. "While the weather conditions in the Arctic were unusual, they weren't unprecedented," Kay said. "We've seen them before and they haven't had the same impact. So something's different up there. It's likely that sea ice is thinner, so it's more vulnerable to this variability." How much of a role sunshine had compared with other factors is still unresolved, said Julienne Stroeve of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., but "the bottom line is that the ice has become very thin," she said. Earlier this month, the center released an update on the state of the Arctic sea ice after it reached its annual maximum in March. "This winter the ice is even thinner than last, so if we were to have a similar pattern as last summer, we would lose even more ice than we did in 2007," Stroeve said. "But even if we were to have conditions from other previous years, it's still likely that we could see dramatic ice loss again this summer." Related Links: Larry O'Hanlon's blog: Earth Impacts National Snow and Ice Data Center |
advertisement
Put Discovery News on Your Site!
|
