So How�s That Sea Ice Doing?

By BJ Bjornson

A little over a month ago, the climate �skeptic� sites were all-a-twitter with news that the Arctic sea ice maximum had grown to near average levels, which was of course proof enough for them that the whole climate change phenomena was just some massive socialist plot.

Now, of course the scientists pointed out that much of this late-forming ice was quite thin and likely to disappear rapidly as soon as the temperatures began to rise again during the spring and summer, but what do they know? They only study this kind of thing for a living, not like the kind of folks who can pluck a single line out of 10,000 emails to prove that whole mountain of scientific evidence is just a farce.

Yep, April was a good month for the �skeptics� on this issue, but somehow, I doubt those folks will be quite as vocal about the data coming out of this month.

Arctic sea ice is on track to recede to a record low this year, suggesting that northern waters free of summer ice are coming faster than anyone thought.

The latest satellite information shows ice coverage is equal to what it was in 2007, the lowest year on record, and is declining faster than it did that year.

Of course, the story is deeper than just the surface area being covered by sea ice, though that�s what gets the headlines, it is the volume of the sea ice, and particularly the amount of multi-year ice, that is the most worrying sign, and that volume has been decreasing every year even as the surface area has varied from the record low to not-quite-as-low.

One of Canada's top sea-ice experts suggests things might even be worse than Dr. Serreze thinks. His data could be underestimating the collapse of summer ice cover, said David Barber of the University of Manitoba. Researchers can't learn anything from satellite data about the state or thickness of the ice.

�What we think is thick multiyear ice late in the summer is in fact not,� he said. �It's heavily decayed first-year ice. When that stuff starts to reform in the fall, we think it's multiyear ice, but it's not.�

Arctic explorers and scientific expeditions are finding more open water and untrustworthy ice ever, Prof. Barber said.

He pointed out the Arctic continued to lose multiyear ice even in 2008 and 2009, when total ice coverage rebounded somewhat.

True multiyear ice � the thick, hard stuff that stops ships � now comprises about 18 per cent of the Arctic ice pack. In 1981, when Prof. Barber first went north, that figure was 90 per cent.

Of course, the fact that all of that thin ice disappeared rapidly like the scientists predicted is probably just another of those �tricks� they keep using, right?