The Arctic ice is the thinnest it has ever been at this time of the year.  What’s more, it’s spring and summer is on the way. Researchers are saying that some 90% of the Arctic ice is just 1-2 years old. The researchers are with NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado.

The Arctic Ocean

“We’re not set up well for summertime,” ice data center scientist Walt Meier said Monday. “We’re in a very precarious situation.”

Apparently sea ice needs to survive for two years before it becomes the type of thick sea ice that is key.

Thick sea ice, 10 feet thick or more, can be found from the northern boundaries of Greenland and Canada almost to Russia. But not this year. The ice barely extends the center of the Arctic Circle.

This year is an all-time low— just 378,000 square miles, down 43 percent from last year.

“Thick ice traps ocean heat; it keeps the planet in its current state of balance,” said the director of the Center for the Study of Earth from Space at the University of Colorado and NASA’s former chief ice scientist. “When we start to diminish that, the state of balance is likely to change, tip one way or another.”

Sea ice is also important because it reflects sunlight away from Earth. The less see ice there is the more heat is absorbed by the ocean, heating up the planet even more. That can cause changes in global weather patterns.

Younger, thin ice accounts for about 70 percent of the ice cover, however this year it is 90 percent.

What is it they say? “It’s going to be a long summer.” Or was it winter?

Source: Sina
Images by toddraden & nileguide

Back in the ’70s (yeah, I am an old goat) there was a tornado that went through Cincinnati, where I was living at the time. I was listening to the warnings on the radio as I drove a delivery truck for a flower store. I happened to look in the rear view mirror and saw a giant twister. Thankfully, it was about 10 miles away. But, I couldn’t help but get out of my truck and just stand there enthralled, watching it come my way. Beautiful. It was at the height of the Cold War. Russia was saying “Our nukes can destroy the world more times than yours can.” America answered back “Destroying the Earth a few times is enough.” Neither country had the power to stop the tornado.

Storms have a beauty about them. Yeah, there’s often destruction. But there is still beauty. How about these pix after an Ice Storm in China?

The very fact that 46,000 cruise ship passengers have been able to make their way to Antarctica – places which would have been inaccessible 20 years ago, are good examples of the effects of global warming at the South Pole.

While the world still argues about how real or unreal the threat of global warming is, the effects though are giving definitive proofs. With shrinking icebergs, cracked ice caps and collapsing sheets of ice, it’s a fact that Antarctica is becoming a warmer place. And while that might be a great thing for tourists come every summer, it could mean disaster for the planet in the long run.

Kayaker Jon Bowermaster led his team of 12 men across 500 miles around the northern Antarctic Peninsula for five weeks and found the dangerous effects of global warming loom large. The region has gotten 5 degrees hotter than it was in 1945 with average temperatures always on the rise each year.

However, the greatest threat in the region is that during summers it rains more frequently now. The rain melts the snow at a rapid pace and leaves creatures like the Penguins and Seals wet and shivering in the Antarctic cold. They believe that the excessive and unseasonal rain in Antarctica is causing both its topography and its creatures more harm than the rising temperatures.

If the trend continues, then very soon we could find the rate of melting ice caps increase to a point where every coastal city on the planet is under serious and immediate threat. Yet, much of the world still ironically debates global warming in its well furnished boardrooms. Doesn’t sound fun anymore, is it?

Image copyright to 1, 2, 3, 4

There is absolutely no doubt that carbon emissions caused by excessive use of fossil fuel and our callous cutting of trees have caused global warming to creep up to such dangerous levels that it is causing a serious threat to the polar ice caps and all the animals that reside in the cold paradise.

Polar Bears have been stranded on melting ice caps and have often eventually drowned to their death because of this new climate pattern. But, ADDI has come up with a very unique concept for these stranded animals, in the form of a Lifejacket.

The Polarbears are drowning because of the ice that are melting. They have to swim up to 100 km to find food. Global warming needs to be stopped.

However, his effort is more an attempt to promote awareness in an artistic way than to actually make a realistic lifejacket and strap it onto these animals, because it would seriously hinder their ability to swim and fish and even compromise their natural camouflage.

The whole message is simple and far more significant. Stop the pollution (and be better stewards to our Planet – like Bill would say) or the day we’ll need to wear lifejackets, is not really that far away! – via Dvice

Whenever there is a scientific theory or even an assumption, the most obvious effect of it, is the appearance of the skeptics. It is such people who have always maintained that the humans as a race were over-reacting to the phenomenon of ‘global warming’ and that it was just a natural cycle of the Earth that was causing climate changes.

But scientists have now proved beyond any doubt that the climate change at the poles is indeed because of human activities and our impact on the planet.

Using four computer models and data from dozens of weather stations sited around both the North and South Poles, the scientists were able to prove that the climatic change at the poles is so great that there is no way any natural model of climate change will account for such steep increase in polar temperatures.

The polar ice has been melting at a rate that is far higher than normal and in the last two years we have seen for the first time ever, that the Arctic Circle and North Pole kind of melts into an Island. The temperature even in Antarctica have been on the rise and while the Ozone depletion helped reverse the heating effect for a while, it’s now replenished and will increase the temperatures even further.

While there has been no doubt in the minds of many that human activity was indeed destroying the poles, this now proves the theory beyond doubt. The melting sea ice in the Arctic and the increasing temperatures in the Antarctic are all further proof of how much we need to cut down on pollution before we get sniffed out due to our own over-indulgence.

Images by 1, 2

A U.S. scientist will blame global warming if ships are able to sail over the normally frozen over North Pole at the top of our globe. Frankly, I’d like to make the trip in a ship. I mean, how often do you get to do that sort of thing? The scientist from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in CO says, “Symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water.” Yeah, a guy working at the snow and ice data center would say that, wouldn’t he? I want to know why he thinks so.

The scientist says that “for the first time that I am aware of, the North Pole is covered with extensive first-year ice.” And I ask, “And…?”

Scientists worry that a rapid meltoff in the Arctic could threaten permafrost in continental soil elsewhere above the Arctic circle. And, I ask again, “And….?” I may be wrong but there are always a lot of coulds, mays and believes in such statements. No? Don’t get me wrong, I am for loving our home, Earth, and being a good steward, but I don’t get the impression that the Earth is as vulnerable as many scientists are trying to make it out to be.

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