Australian Severe Weather Forum

Some unnerving news to some extent!

Satellites witness lowest Arctic ice coverage in history
 
14 September 2007
The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk to its lowest level this week since satellite measurements began nearly 30 years ago, opening up the Northwest Passage – a long-sought short cut between Europe and Asia that has been historically impassable.
 
In the mosaic image above, created from nearly 200 images acquired in early September 2007 by the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) instrument aboard ESA’s Envisat satellite, the dark gray colour represents the ice-free areas while green represents areas with sea ice.

Leif Toudal Pedersen from the Danish National Space Centre said: "We have seen the ice-covered area drop to just around 3 million sq km which is about 1 million sq km less than the previous minima of 2005 and 2006. There has been a reduction of the ice cover over the last 10 years of about 100 000 sq km per year on average, so a drop of 1 million sq km in just one year is extreme.

 You can view the entire report here at http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEMYTC13J6F_planet_0.html

Mike

This is excellent. As part of our Sustainability Study for 2007 (Auburn Council), I have been watching this happen and there are two excellent web sites that have dedicated discussion on this important topic being:-

a) CNN.com (Find Planet in Peril) or the environment / climate section. It is or has been well documented.
b) BBC.com or the BBC web site. In addition, the BBC documents all current global severe weather, climate and weather extremes. The diminishing ice has also been well reported.

Harley Pearman