Sea Ice

A fast-changing Arctic broke new records for loss of sea ice and spring snow cover this year, as well as the extent of the summertime melt of the Greenland ice sheet, federal scientists reported Wednesday. The latest report about the melting Arctic comes as frustrations flared in Doha, Qatar, over the slow progress at United Nations climate talks to reach a global agreement on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. The buildup of the gases is elevating average global temperatures, with the most pronounced changes in the northernmost latitudes.

Anyone forced to shovel their car out of a snowbank this winter might wonder just how it is a blizzard can occur in a warming climate. The answer, climate scientists say, may have to do with record sea ice losses in the Arctic. At a Tuesday news conference, several researchers said that warming conditions in the Arctic may be weakening jet stream currents and causing extreme weather systems to linger in northern mid-latitudes. "Ironically ... as the ice pack retreats and the Arctic heats up, there's a counteracting tendency in middle latitudes for colder winters, as well as hotter summers," said Stephen Vavrus, senior scientist at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin.

The area of floating sea ice in the Arctic has fallen to its lowest size ever observed, researchers said Monday. Moreover, the ice is still shrinking and is not expected to reach its minimum until sometime in September. The average shrinkage of the ice has been increasing steadily since 2007, and researchers attribute the loss to global warming, which is causing warmer temperatures in the region. On Monday, the extent of the Arctic sea ice was 1.58 million miles, which is 27,000 square miles below the previous record set on Sept.

Loss of sea ice due to global warming could open new seasonal shipping lanes through the Arctic Ocean by midcentury, sharply reducing transit times and opening a Pandora's box of safety, environmental and legal issues, according to scientists. In a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Plus, researchers estimated that new shipping lanes linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are likely to open between 2040 and 2059. The lanes would not be open year-round, however, and would likely be restricted to late summer, when ice cover is lowest.

SEATTLE -- The heaviest polar ice in more than a decade is clinging to the northern coast of Alaska and could postpone the commencement of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic until the beginning of August - a delay of up to two weeks, Shell Alaska officials said Friday. Unveiling the newly refurbished ice-class drilling rig that is poised to commence plumbing two exploratory wells this summer in the Beaufort Sea, Shell executives  said the unusually robust sea ice would further narrow what already is a tight window for operations in a $4-billion program designed to measure the extent of what could be the United States' most important new inventory of oil and gas. Shell has pledged to end its first season of exploratory drilling by Oct. 31 in the Beaufort Sea and 38 days earlier in the more remote Chukchi Sea to remain within the relatively ice-free summer season.

Crucial Arctic sea ice this summer shrank to its second-lowest level on record, scientists said Tuesday. The ice covered 1.74 million square miles, marking a low point for this summer, according to NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. Last summer, the sea ice covered 1.59 million square miles, the lowest since record-keeping began in 1979. Arctic ice always melts in summer and refreezes in winter. But over the years, more of the ice is lost to the sea with less recovered in winter.

Arctic sea ice is melting three times faster than many scientists had projected, U.S. researchers reported just days ahead of the next major international report on climate change. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado in Boulder on Monday said they had concluded, using actual measurements, that Arctic sea ice had declined at an average rate of about 7.8% per decade between 1953 and 2006.

The steady melting of Arctic ice greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed a tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years. Greenland's ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer's end was half what it had been four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by the Associated Press.

The discovery of a large rookery of emperor penguins in Antarctica has raised hopes that the birds were not disastrously affected by a huge iceberg last year. The appearance in the Ross Sea of an iceberg the size of Jamaica and an increase in sea ice made it almost impossible for the birds to find food, causing the deaths of thousands of penguin chicks. But researchers on a U.S.

Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has reached its second lowest level in nearly 30 years, according to new satellite measurements released this week. The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that sea ice in the Arctic now covers about 2.03 million square miles. The lowest point since satellite measurements began in 1979 was 1.65 million square miles set last September. With about three weeks left in the Arctic summer, this year could wind up breaking that record, according to scientists.

SEATTLE - The federal law listing polar bears as a threatened species was upheld Friday by a federal appeals court, which rejected arguments that it is wrong to impose far-ranging and possibly costly protections for a species that remains fairly abundant in many regions of the Arctic. Concluding that attacks on the listing “amount to nothing more than competing views on policy and science,” the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., upheld the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's 2008 decision to protect the animals because the dramatic loss of sea ice leaves them likely to become in danger of extinction.

First came the polar bear. Now, the federal government has added two other marine mammals to the list of creatures threatened with extinction because of vanishing sea ice in a warming Arctic. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has officially listed bearded seal and the ringed seal as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The reason is not inadequate supplies of fish and other food for these seals, or excessive hunting by humans. It's the loss of their sea ice habitat.

A fast-changing Arctic broke records for loss of sea ice and spring snow cover this year, as well as summertime melt of the Greenland ice sheet, federal scientists reported Wednesday. “The Arctic is an extremely sensitive part of the world,” said Jane Lubchenco , administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. As it warms, she said, “we see the results with less snow and sea ice, greater ice sheet melt and changing vegetation.” Speaking at the fall meeting of American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, Lubchenco and other scientists unveiled the annual update of the Arctic Report Card , a collaboration of more than 140 scientists that summarizes ways the Arctic continues to grow warmer and greener.

A fast-changing Arctic broke new records for loss of sea ice and spring snow cover this year, as well as the extent of the summertime melt of the Greenland ice sheet, federal scientists reported Wednesday. The latest report about the melting Arctic comes as frustrations flared in Doha, Qatar, over the slow progress at United Nations climate talks to reach a global agreement on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. The buildup of the gases is elevating average global temperatures, with the most pronounced changes in the northernmost latitudes.

If the prospect of coastal cities sinking into the sea 100 years from now does not motivate Americans to do something dramatic to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, there is something happening at this very moment that should be setting off sirens. Rising CO2 levels are making the oceans more acidic and that change in the chemistry of the seas is disrupting the food chain that ends with you and me. For years, as scientists watched the carbon emissions from our tailpipes and smokestacks spew into the sky and goose temperatures higher, there was one mitigating factor that was keeping a brake on global warming: The oceans were absorbing a whole lot of that CO2. Now, though, it turns out that is not such a blessing.

Faced with growing concerns about the hunting of polar bears in Canada, the Obama administration announced Friday it will again support a ban on the commercial trade of polar bears, whose hides fetch up to $16,000 each on the international market. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a position paper that advocates including the polar bear on the list of species that are subject to the most stringent constraints on international trade. The effect of such a move, if adopted by the 176-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora when it meets in March, would be to prohibit the sale of polar bear furs, claws, teeth and other body parts outside of Canada.  Hunts by aboriginal Inuits in Alaska and other polar states would still be allowed, but outside sale of the pelts would not. This post has been updated as indicated below [Updated 5:38 p.m., Oct. 5, 2012: “Certain types of items, such as hunting trophies, live animals for zoological parks, and specimens for scientific research are generally considered by CITES to be primarily non-commercial,” the Fish and Wildlife Service said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times.

Nine polar bears were observed in one day swimming in open ocean off Alaska's northwest coast, an increase from previous surveys that may indicate warming conditions are forcing bears to make riskier long-distance swims to stable sea ice or land. The bears were spotted in the Chukchi Sea on a flight Saturday by a federal marine contractor, Science Applications International Corp. Observers were looking for whales but also recorded walrus and polar bears, said project director Janet Clark.

The sea ice that waxes and wanes with the seasons at the poles has long been seen as a window into the Earth's complex climate system. Any global changes are likely to be most visible--and extreme--on the frozen edges of the Earth that are most vulnerable to warming. But that ice has long frustrated legions of scientists trying to capture its vagaries. Icebreakers moving through the region and taking measurements are rare, and nonexistent in the winter when the pack ice freezes tight.

Arctic sea ice is shrinking at a rate much faster than scientists ever predicted and its collapse, due to global warming, may well cause extreme weather this winter in North America and Europe, according to climate scientists. Last month, researchers announced that Arctic sea ice had dwindled to the smallest size ever observed by man, covering almost half the area it did 30 years ago, when satellites and submarines first began measuring it. While the loss of summer sea ice is likely to open up new shipping lanes and may connect the West Coast of the United States to the Far East via a trans-polar route, researchers say it will also affect weather patterns and Arctic wildlife.