According to the National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC), melt season is underway, and sea ice in the Arctic is retreating rapidly. At the end of May, ice extent was at daily record low levels. By sharp contrast, sea ice extent in the Southern Hemisphere continues to track at daily record high levels.
Arctic sea ice extent for May 2015 averaged 12.65 million square kilometers (4.88 million square miles), the third lowest May ice extent in the satellite record. This is 730,000 square kilometers (282,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 long-term average of 13.38 million square kilometers (5.17 million square miles) and 70,000 square kilometers (27,000 square miles) above the record low for the month, observed in 2004.
The below average extent for this month is partly a result of early melt out of ice in the Bering Sea and the persistence of below-average ice conditions in the Barents Sea. Early breakup of sea ice in the Bering Sea also occurred last spring. Elsewhere, ice is tracking at near-average levels. By the end of May, several openings had appeared in the ice pack, most notably in the southern Beaufort Sea near Banks Island, off the coast of Barrow, Alaska, and in the Kara Sea. Now that we are entering the month of June, the rate of ice loss is likely to quicken, but how fast will depend on the weather conditions and the date of ice surface melt onset across the high Arctic.
Down below, Antarctica above
Beginning in late April, Antarctic sea ice extent surpassed the previous satellite-era record set in 2014, and for the entire month of May it has set daily record high ice extents. This makes May 2015 the record high month for the 1979 to 2015 period. As has been the case for several months, ice extent is unusually high in areas of the eastern Ross Sea – western Amundsen Sea, and in the northern and northeastern Weddell Sea. Unusually high extent has developed over the Davis Sea area of the far southern Indian Ocean.
Antarctic sea ice extent for May 2015 averaged 12.10 million square kilometers (4.67 million square miles). The linear rate of increase for May is now 2.88% per decade for the period 1979 to 2015.
Despite the record sea ice extent, air temperatures at the 925 millibar level (about 3,000 feet above the surface) remained generally above average for most of the continent and coastal areas of the surrounding ocean. Air temperatures were as much as 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1981 to 2010 average over the West Antarctic ice sheet and central Ross Sea. The region of high ice extent near the northeastern Ross Sea had near-average air temperatures in the vicinity of the ice edge. Cooler than average temperatures were observed near the ice edge in the northeastern Weddell Sea (2 degrees Celsius, or 4 degrees Fahrenheit, below average) and Davis Sea (4 degrees Celsius, or 7 degrees Fahrenheit, below average). Air circulation patterns were variable for the month. The Southern Annular Mode, a north-south movement of the westerly wind belt that circles Antarctica, was in a near neutral state for the month as a whole.
Source: NSIDC
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