raveneye

To continue Tec's point above about the unprecedented loss of the arctic sea ice this year, this is an excellent site for official information:

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/

This is the site set up by University of Illinois climate scientists J. Walsh and W. Chapman to show their findings on arctic climate change.

The basic point is that this is the worst year on record for the arctic. It is so unusually ice-free this year that scientists worry that we are in the midst of a permanent "regime change" or have finally passed the tipping point for the far north. The worst predictions seem to have been borne out; the rate of sea ice loss is now much faster than anyone would have predicted just a few years ago.

Here are some graphics:



The above is the ice anomaly, the amount by which the sea ice is lower than the baseline (analogous to the temperature anomalies posted on the other thread).








THis is the current year only: absolute amount on top, and the anomaly plotted underneath. Note that the anomaly shows that 2007 was way below the average all year, and the anomaly itself is on a very rapid decreasing trend at present. This is what is alarming and is beyond the worst predictions.

At this point many scientists have given up hope; it seems we have lost the battle for the far north, it's too late now to do much of anything to prevent the complete loss of the summer sea ice.

Check out their animation here:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosph...movie.2007.mov

(This is big, around 200 megs).

Here is a nice explanation from Timothy Lenton from the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich: