Tag: sea ice

Thousands of sea water samples are being collected by research vessels around the British Isles as part of an 18 month study of how much carbon dioxide is taken up (and released) in UK waters. Coordinated by the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), the University of Liverpool and Plymouth Marine Laboratory, the shelf-wide sampling project is part of the larger Shelf Sea Biogeochemistry programme, jointly funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). The sampling covers an area from Rockall to beyond the Scilly Isles and most of the North Sea and is unique in its scale and seasonal coverage. This project involves ships from four organisations: Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS) Marine Scotland, the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) and the Marine Institute in Ireland.  Since April, staff onboard the vessels have been collecting samples of the seawater at noon every day in special glass tubes, then syringe filtering and freezing them. Additional data are also being collected by Ferryboxes – specialist equipment that analyses water samples – on ferries from Germany, Spain and Norway into UK waters. Over the past few months, crates of frozen samples ...

Rigs at risk from drifting icebergs can expect an early warning following research by the Memorial University of Newfoundland. The Autonomous Ocean Systems Laboratory (AOSL) at the University is undertaking a long-term study into modelling the behavior of icebergs that includes acquiring real-world data that will increase the accuracy of predicting the rate and direction of their drift. According to Saab Seaeye, they are also finding ways to identify exceptionally deep icebergs that might drag across the seabed in shallow water and damage pipelines. Specially designed autonomous vehicles are being developed for the role. Fitted with ice profiling sonar they will stay with an iceberg for 28 days at a time gathering data on ice thickness and volume - as well as direction and drift. To help evaluate systems planned for use on the unmanned autonomous vehicles, AOSL is using a Saab Seaeye Falcon ROV as a development platform. Neil Riggs, senior project manager at AOSL, says the Falcon is a valuable development tool for helping understand how various payloads will behave when attached to autonomous vehicle systems. "It was recognised at an early stage that in order to be effective in performing R&D for autonomous systems we needed an ...

It's July and a cargo ship, laden with some 70,000 tons of coal, is slowly wending its way from Russia to China across the top of the world. This ship is functional, not beautiful; it's longer than two football fields and at least 30 yards wide. As it enters the Kara Sea, north of Russia, the water is scattered with ice floes that are like small islands. With the aid of an icebreaker ship, the cargo ship makes its way steadily under the 24-hour sun to deliver its goods. In 2004, the possibility of a large commercial tanker crossing the Arctic from Europe to Asia was pretty much nil: even with a trail blazed by sturdy icebreaker ships, dense ice obstructed too much of the route. A decade later, that same journey is almost routine. Rapidly rising temperatures the world over—especially in the northern Arctic zone—now allow some 100 of these mammoth ships to travel the Arctic waters in the summertime, delivering iron ore, coal and other commodities. The consequences of the Arctic ice melt extend far beyond shorter shipping lanes. The warmer Arctic waters are opening access to oil, gas and mineral deposits for an energy-craving global population and ...

According to National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Arctic sea ice continued to expand throughout the month of October, remaining at near-average levels on the Atlantic side and below average on the Pacific side. In the Southern Hemisphere, Antarctic sea ice has declined after reaching its record maximum in October and is now nearly within two standard deviations of the long-term average. Overview of conditions Sea ice extent in October averaged 8.06 million square kilometers (3.11 million square miles). This is 850,000 square kilometers (328,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 long-term average of 8.91 million square kilometers (3.44 million square miles) and 1.29 million square kilometers (498,000 square miles) above the record low for the month observed in 2007. Arctic sea ice extent for October 2014(Image Credit: NSIDC) Arctic sea ice extent continued to increase throughout the month of October. Ice extent in the Pacific side remains below average. Areas in the Beaufort Sea along the Canadian and Alaskan coasts, and in the Chukchi Sea along the coast of Siberia were still ice free at the end of October. The image of monthly average sea ice extent shows a large polynya within the East Siberian Sea, but ...

Shipping industry plans to make use of ice-free Arctic waters could be set back by new research showing more accurate sea ice forecasts could still be years away. The declining levels of summer sea ice have opened up the Arctic for commercial shipping and tourist cruises when the ice is at its lowest. However, plans to expand Arctic shipping routes, as well as oil and gas exploration, could be made more difficult by findings by climate scientists at the University of Reading. They found that measurements of ice thickness are crucial for accurate forecasts of where ice will melt each summer. Even the most modern satellites measuring ice thickness - such as the European Space Agency's CryoSat2 spacecraft, which launched in 2010 - are unable to make the required measurements during the summer, as pools of melted water on the surface of the ice confuse its onboard instruments. Lead researcher Dr Jonny Day said: "'Global warming is heating up the Arctic and the amount of summer ice is much reduced compared to a few decades ago. This has opened up not only new potential shipping routes but the possibility that energy companies could get access to vast oil reserves, thought to ...

A Synthesis Report has been issued, based on the reports of the three Working Groups of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), including relevant Special Reports.  The report provides an integrated view of climate change as the final part of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems. Observed changes in the climate system Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen. Over the period 1992 to 2011, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been losing mass (high confidence), likely at a larger rate over 2002 to 2011. Glaciers have continued to shrink almost worldwide (high confidence). Northern Hemisphere spring now cover has continued to decrease in extent. There is high confidence that permafrost temperatures have increased in most regions since the early 1980s in response to increased surface temperature and changing snow cover. The annual mean ...

Following the closing of the Northeastern Passage of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) on October 1st, the Global Ice Center at Weathernews Inc. looks back at the opening period this year. Ice in the Arctic Sea continues on a trend of recession since the turn of the century. For the fifth year in a row, Russia’s Northeastern passage fully opened from late August, staying open for six-weeks. This summer saw a record number of applications for permission to sail the NSR. Meanwhile, ice remaining in the Canadian archipelago prevented the Northwestern passage from becoming transitable for the first time in five years.                Number of days the NSR has stayed fully open over the past five years Northeastern Passage Open for Fifth Consecutive Year While Northwestern Passage Remains Closed The lowest area of ice observed by the Global Ice Center (GIC) at Weathernews this summer was 4.8 million km2, which is the sixth smallest area in recorded history. (fig. 1) Different trends can be seen when comparing the Northeastern and Northwestern passages in the summer of 2014. Ice in the Northeastern passage began to melt from late May, opening fully from August 21st to October ...

Scientists and engineers of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) are currently starting work on a long-term observatory with observation stations from the Norwegian Sea to the Arctic Ocean. In the coming years, the AWI researchers intend to upgrade their existing long-term observatories along this key climatological interface into a comprehensive research infrastructure and deploy a wide range of modern marine technologies. The overriding objective is to be able to observe the changes in the ocean and its ecosystems from the surface to the deep sea with the aid of the new FRAM observatory. The Helmholtz Association has approved this strategic expansion investment and the German government and the state of Bremen are financing the establishment of this new platform for the first five years with € 25 million. “The Arctic is changing faster than we thought – and the changes we’re finding in the ice cover, weather and use by humans is concurrently affecting life in the ocean. One of our primary goals is to observe the changes in the Arctic Ocean in all its facets and understand the causes and effects down to the deep-sea level,” says project coordinator Prof. Dr. Antje Boetius. ...

The sun has set over the central Arctic Ocean and Arctic sea ice extent is now increasing. Sea ice extent in Antarctica appears to have passed its seasonal maximum according to National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The peak Antarctic value recorded so far of over 20 million square kilometers (7.7 million square miles) sets a new record over the period of satellite observations. Overview of conditions Following the seasonal daily minimum of 5.02 million square kilometers (1.94 million square miles) that was set on September 17, 2014 (6th lowest in the satellite record), Arctic sea ice has started its seasonal cycle of growth. Arctic sea ice extent averaged for the month of September 2014 was 5.28 million square kilometers (2.04 million square miles), also the 6th lowest in the satellite record. This is 1.24 million square kilometers (479,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average extent, and 1.65 million square kilometers (637,000 square miles) above the record low monthly average for September that occurred in 2012. Conditions in context Because ice extent falls through the first part of September and rises in the latter part, statistics on the average daily rate of ice loss or gain through ...