Latest news with #NSIDC
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
Scientist issue warning about concerning phenomenon ahead of upcoming winter season: 'Keeps the surface cooler'
Experts have projected record low levels of Arctic sea ice for the coming winter, which counterintuitively could mean frigid conditions for the United States, Canada, and Europe, Severe Weather Europe reported. What's happening? The Arctic ice melting season typically runs from March to September, and already scientists have observed record low levels of ice for the time of year, per Severe Weather Europe. Unlike the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, Arctic sea ice does not sit atop a land mass. Instead, it floats in the ocean, meaning that when it melts, it does not contribute to sea-level rise in the same manner as melting land ice. However, Arctic sea ice, or a lack thereof, still has a dramatic impact on the world's oceans and climate. Why is Arctic sea ice important? Arctic sea ice is much more reflective than ocean water, which means that it absorbs much less heat from the sun, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. "The ocean reflects only 6% of the incoming solar radiation and absorbs the rest, while sea ice reflects 50 to 70% of the incoming energy," the NSIDC explained. "The sea ice absorbs less solar energy and keeps the surface cooler." Thus, less sea ice results in warmer oceans, and warmer oceans threaten vital ecosystems, alter currents, and change weather patterns. They also contribute to sea-level rise because water expands as it warms, according to NOAA. Less Arctic sea ice during the winter months also means higher temperatures in the atmosphere, which can weaken or even collapse the polar vortex, according to Severe Weather Europe. The condition of the polar vortex influences everyday weather around the globe. "A strong/stable polar vortex usually means strong polar circulation and jet stream," Severe Weather Europe explained. "This locks the colder air into the Arctic Circle, creating milder conditions for most of the United States and warmer-than-normal conditions over southern Canada." Do you think our power grid needs to be upgraded? Definitely Only in some states Not really I'm not sure Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. A weaker and more unstable polar vortex, on the other hand, weakens the jet stream, which allows cold air to escape from the Arctic region and descend upon the U.S. and Canada. What's being done about the loss of Arctic sea ice? The loss of Arctic ice is just one of the many ways in which rising global temperatures are transforming the world, with complicated and unpredictable results. In order to reduce the rate of Arctic sea ice loss and avoid the most severe impacts of rising global temperatures, it is necessary to significantly reduce the amount of heat-trapping pollution entering the atmosphere. While the problem may seem so huge as to be insurmountable, there are things large and small that everyone can do to help make a difference. From making your voice heard and pushing for political action to taking public transit, driving an electric vehicle, and installing solar panels on your home, there are plenty of ways for anyone to contribute. Pairing solar panels with a home battery system can drop your energy bills to practically nothing while also making your home more resilient in the event of power outages. It also can help you maximize the environmental benefits and cost savings of driving an EV. EnergySage offers a free service that makes it easy to compare quotes from vetted local installers, saving customers up to $10,000. Join our free newsletter for weekly updates on the latest innovations improving our lives and shaping our future, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet. Solve the daily Crossword
National Observer
4 days ago
- Science
- National Observer
Sea ice can be ‘early warning system' for global heating — but the US is halting data sharing
This story was originally published by The Guardian and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration Scientists analysing the cascading impacts of record low levels of Antarctic sea ice fear a loss of critical US government satellite data will make it harder to track the rapid changes taking place at both poles. Researchers around the globe were told last week the US Department of Defence will stop processing and providing the data, used in studies on the state of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, at the end of this month. Tracking the state of sea ice is crucial for scientists to understand how global heating is affecting the planet. Sea ice reflects the sun's energy back out to space but, as long-term losses have been recorded, more of the planet's ocean is exposed to the sun's energy, causing more heating. The National Snow and Ice Data Center, based at the University of Colorado, maintains a Sea Ice Index used around the world to track in near real-time the extent of sea ice around the globe. In two updates in the past week, the centre said the US government's Department of Defence, which owns the satellites that contain onboard instruments used to track sea ice, would stop 'processing and delivering' the data on 31 July. The US Department of Defense's decision to halt sharing of critical sea ice data "couldn't come at a worse time," according to researchers. Climate scientists have been warning that Trump administration cuts have targeted climate functions across government, and there has been fears the sea ice data could be targeted. The news comes as new research, some of which relied on the data, found that record low amounts of sea ice around Antarctica in recent years had seen more icebergs splintering off the continent's ice shelves in a process scientists warned could push up global sea levels faster than current modelling has predicted. Dr Alex Fraser, a co-author of the research at the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership (AAPP), said NSIDC's sea ice data was 'our number one heart rate monitor' for the state of the planet's ice. 'It's our early warning system and tells us if the patient is about to flatline. We need this data and now [the scientific community] will be forced to put together a record from a different instrument. We won't have that continued context that we have had previously.' NSIDC has said it is working with alternative and higher-resolution instruments from a different satellite, but has warned that data may not be directly comparable with the current instruments. Fraser said: 'We are seeing records now year on year in Antarctica, so from that perspective this could not have come at a worse time.' Dr Walt Meier, a senior scientist at NSIDC, said there were other 'passive microwave instruments' that could keep the long-term record going, but he said differences with older sensors created a 'a challenge to make the long-term record consistent and there will be some degradation in the consistency of the long-term record.' 'I think we will end up with a robust and quality record that users can have confidence in,' Meier said, but said this would add to uncertainty to estimates of trends. Asked why the government was stopping the data, he said because 'everything is old and resources are limited, my guess is that it is not worth the time and effort to upgrade the systems for such old sensors, which may fail at any time.' The research, published in the journal PNAS Nexus, found a link between increasing numbers of icebergs calving from floating ice shelves and the loss of sea ice. While the loss of sea ice does not directly raise sea levels, the research said it exposed more ice shelves to wave action, causing them to break apart and release icebergs faster. Glaciologist Dr Sue Cook, also from AAPP, said 'like a cork in a bottle' those shelves help to slow down the advance of land-based ice that does raise sea levels if it breaks off into the ocean. She said the higher rates of iceberg calving seen in Antarctica were not accounted for in calculations of how quickly the ice sheet might break apart and contribute global sea levels. 'If we shift to this state where summer sea ice is very low but we continue using models based on previous periods, then we will definitely underestimate how quickly Antarctica will contribute to sea level rise,' she said. The study also outlined other knock-on effects from the record low sea ice levels in the Antarctic, including the loss of more seals and penguins if trends continued. As many as 7,000 emperor penguin chicks died in late 2022 after the early break-up of the stable ice they used for shelter while they grow their waterproof plumage. A US Navy spokesperson confirmed the data processing from its defence meteorological satellite program (DMSP) would stop on 31 July 'in accordance with Department of Defense policy.' DMSP is a joint program owned by the US Space Force, the spokesperson said, and was scheduled for discontinuation in September 2026. 'The Navy is discontinuing contributions to DMSP given the program no longer meets our information technology modernization requirements.'
Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
US military cuts climate scientists off from vital satellite sea-ice data
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Climate scientists in the United States are to be cut off from satellite data measuring the amount of sea ice — a sensitive barometer of climate change — as the U.S. Department of Defense announces plans to cancel processing of the data for scientific research. The changes are the latest attacks by the U.S. government on science and the funding of scientific research in an effort to slash the budget to enable tax cuts elsewhere. Already, these attacks have seen the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the National Science Foundation evicted from their offices, references to climate science removed from websites, funding of data for hurricane forecasts cancelled, and dozens of NASA missions under threat and their project teams asked to produce close-down plans as the space agency's budget is slashed. Now, scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), based at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who have been using data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) that is flown on a series of satellites that form the United States Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, have been told they will soon no longer have access to that data. SSMIS is a microwave radiometer that can scan Earth for ice coverage on land and sea. The Department of Defense uses this data for planning deployments of its own ships, but it has always made the processed data available to scientists, too — until now. In an announcement on June 24, the Department of Defense declared that the Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center operated by the U.S. Navy would cease the real-time processing and stop supplying scientists with the sea-ice data, although NPR reports that, following an outcry at the suddenness of this decision, it has been put back to the end of July. Politics aside, purely from a scientific point of view, this is madness. The sea-ice index, which charts how much ice is covering the ocean in the Arctic and Antarctic, is strongly dependent upon global warming, with increasing average temperatures both in the ocean and in the atmosphere leading to more sea-ice melting. Sea ice acts as a buffer to slow or even prevent the melting of large glaciers; remove that buffer and catastrophic melting of glaciers moves one big step closer, threatening dangerous sea level rises. Without the ability to track the sea ice, scientists are blinded to one of the most significant measures of climate change and become unable to tell how close we are getting to the brink. But there's even a commercial side to knowing how much sea ice is present on our oceans. The fewer icebergs there are, the closer cargo ships can sail around the north pole, allowing them to take shorter, faster routes. RELATED STORIES — Earth's sea ice hits all-time low, NASA satellites reveal — Climate change: Causes and effects — Trump's 2026 budget would slash NASA funding by 24% and its workforce by nearly one third Of course, the United States is not the only country to operate climate instruments on satellites. For instance, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has a satellite called Shizuku, more formally known as the Global Change Observation Mission-Water (GCOM-W). On board Shizuku is an instrument called the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2, or AMSRS-2, which does pretty much the same job as SSMIS. Researchers at NSIDC had already been looking to transfer over to AMSRS-2 data, perhaps having got wind that the Department of Defense's decision was coming down the pipeline. But the switch will take time for the calibration of the instrument and data with NSIDC's systems, leading to a gap in scientists' data — a blind spot in our monitoring of the climate that we can ill afford.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Sea ice data does not disprove warming in Antarctica
"We are constantly being lied too (sic)," says a May 6, 2025 post on Threads. The post shares an image juxtaposing two charts measuring sea ice extent. One is from December 24, 1979, while the other from December 24, 2024. "Antarctic sea ice extent is 17% higher today than it was in 1979," text under the charts reads. Similar claims also appeared on other platforms, including Instagram and X. Narratives seeking to deny the impact of climate change on the Arctic and Antarctic -- the polar regions surrounding the North and South poles -- often rely on sea ice data to make misleading claims. In this case, the charts shared online come from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). AFP retrieved exact matches for them from the NSIDC online archives (here and here). But their side-by-side comparison amounts to "a classic case of cherry picking," said Walt Meier, senior research scientist at the NSIDC. "Looking at single days from two years does not give useful information about trends or the response of sea ice to warming," Meier said May 14. The NSIDC says on its website that sea ice data has been repeatedly misused to spread myths about global warming (archived here). Generally, scientists look at decade-long trends for "sea ice extent," a term referring to the total area of the ocean where at least 15 percent of the surface is frozen. The measurements taken on December 24, 1979 and December 24, 2024 do show a difference in sea ice cover, the agency said, but it is about a 12 percent increase -- not 17 percent. Comparing most other dates would have left a different impression. "From 1 January through 13 December, the 2024 extent was below 1979 levels, by over 1 million square kilometers at times," Meier said, noting that this equates to an area roughly the size of Egypt. "Only during 14-31 December were 2024 extents higher than 1979," he added. Antarctica's summer months, from December to February, naturally show greater shifts of sea ice extent because of warmer temperatures and longer hours of sunlight. That means a small change in the timing of the retreat of ice -- and when exactly melt season starts -- can quickly and greatly shift its extent in one December relative to another, Meier explained. Across the whole of 2024, warming was observed and sea ice extent measured lower than the 1979 annual average by about 11 percent, according to NSIDC data. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Antarctic sea ice extent hit its second lowest annual minimum in 2024 since monitoring started in 1979, with the year 2025 likely to tie such a record (archived here and here). Dramatic shifts in climate have already occurred in the Antarctic Peninsula, the part of Antarctica farthest from the South Pole. The peninsula is warming at a rate five times faster than the global average -- and faster than anywhere else within the Southern Hemisphere (archived here). Yet continent-wide patterns of temperature change remain uncertain, scientists say. Unlike the Arctic, where sea ice extent has been consistently decreasing across all areas and seasons since records started, Antarctica's sea ice lacks a defined long-term decline (archived here). "The Antarctic sea ice is thin and open to the ocean, so it has much more variability and thus the global warming signal is not as evident," Meier said. The last decade has shown more extreme fluctuations, which scientists say could indicate a "regime shift" into a new low-extent state, possibly due to warmer oceans (archived here and here). Both polar oceans are warming, with the "Southern Ocean being disproportionately and increasingly important in global ocean heat increase," according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading international consortium of climate scientists (archived here). Samantha Burgess of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which runs the Copernicus climate monitor, added in a February 2025 report: "One of the consequences of a warmer world is melting sea ice, and the record or near-record low sea ice cover at both poles has pushed global sea ice cover to an all-time minimum." When highly reflective snow and ice give way to dark blue ocean, the sun radiation that once used to bounce back into space is instead absorbed by water, accelerating the pace of global warming in a feedback loop. Decreased ice cover also has serious and rapid impacts on ecosystems, such as the survival of penguins and their habitats (archived here). AFP has debunked other claims about the effects of global warming at the Poles, including here.
AFP
23-05-2025
- Science
- AFP
Sea ice data does not disprove warming in Antarctica
"We are constantly being lied too (sic)," says a May 6, 2025 post on Threads. The post shares an image juxtaposing two charts measuring sea ice extent. One is from December 24, 1979, while the other from December 24, 2024. "Antarctic sea ice extent is 17% higher today than it was in 1979," text under the charts reads. Image A screenshot of a Threads post taken on May 20, 2025 Similar claims also appeared on other platforms, including Instagram and X. Narratives seeking to deny the impact of climate change on the Arctic and Antarctic -- the polar regions surrounding the North and South poles -- often rely on sea ice data to make misleading claims. In this case, the charts shared online come from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). AFP retrieved exact matches for them from the NSIDC online archives (here and here). But their side-by-side comparison amounts to "a classic case of cherry picking," said Walt Meier, senior research scientist at the NSIDC. "Looking at single days from two years does not give useful information about trends or the response of sea ice to warming," Meier said May 14. Cherry-picked data The NSIDC says on its website that sea ice data has been repeatedly misused to spread myths about global warming (archived here). Generally, scientists look at decade-long trends for "sea ice extent," a term referring to the total area of the ocean where at least 15 percent of the surface is frozen. Image An image taken from the National Snow and Ice Data Center's (NSIDC) archives shows sea ice extent in Antarctica on December 24, 1979 (National Snow and Ice Data Center) The measurements taken on December 24, 1979 and December 24, 2024 do show a difference in sea ice cover, the agency said, but it is about a 12 percent increase -- not 17 percent. Comparing most other dates would have left a different impression. "From 1 January through 13 December, the 2024 extent was below 1979 levels, by over 1 million square kilometers at times," Meier said, noting that this equates to an area roughly the size of Egypt. "Only during 14-31 December were 2024 extents higher than 1979," he added. Antarctica's summer months, from December to February, naturally show greater shifts of sea ice extent because of warmer temperatures and longer hours of sunlight. That means a small change in the timing of the retreat of ice -- and when exactly melt season starts -- can quickly and greatly shift its extent in one December relative to another, Meier explained. Across the whole of 2024, warming was observed and sea ice extent measured lower than the 1979 annual average by about 11 percent, according to NSIDC data. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Antarctic sea ice extent hit its second lowest annual minimum in 2024 since monitoring started in 1979, with the year 2025 likely to tie such a record (archived here and here). Potential 'regime shift' Dramatic shifts in climate have already occurred in the Antarctic Peninsula, the part of Antarctica farthest from the South Pole. The peninsula is warming at a rate five times faster than the global average -- and faster than anywhere else within the Southern Hemisphere (archived here). Yet continent-wide patterns of temperature change remain uncertain, scientists say. Unlike the Arctic, where sea ice extent has been consistently decreasing across all areas and seasons since records started, Antarctica's sea ice lacks a defined long-term decline (archived here). "The Antarctic sea ice is thin and open to the ocean, so it has much more variability and thus the global warming signal is not as evident," Meier said. The last decade has shown more extreme fluctuations, which scientists say could indicate a "regime shift" into a new low-extent state, possibly due to warmer oceans (archived here and here). Both polar oceans are warming, with the "Southern Ocean being disproportionately and increasingly important in global ocean heat increase," according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading international consortium of climate scientists (archived here). Samantha Burgess of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which runs the Copernicus climate monitor, added in a February 2025 report: "One of the consequences of a warmer world is melting sea ice, and the record or near-record low sea ice cover at both poles has pushed global sea ice cover to an all-time minimum." When highly reflective snow and ice give way to dark blue ocean, the sun radiation that once used to bounce back into space is instead absorbed by water, accelerating the pace of global warming in a feedback loop. Decreased ice cover also has serious and rapid impacts on ecosystems, such as the survival of penguins and their habitats (archived here). AFP has debunked other claims about the effects of global warming at the Poles, including here.
