Satellites Show Arctic Literally on Thin Ice

The latest Arctic sea ice data from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center show that the decade-long trend of shrinking sea ice cover is continuing. New evidence from satellite observations also shows that the ice cap is thinning as well.

Arctic sea ice works like an air conditioner for the global climate system. Ice naturally cools air and water masses, plays a key role in ocean circulation, and reflects solar radiation back into space. In recent years, Arctic sea ice has been declining at a surprising rate.

Scientists who track Arctic sea ice cover from space announced today that this winter had the fifth lowest maximum ice extent on record. The six lowest maximum events since satellite monitoring began in 1979 have all occurred in the past six years (2004-2009).

Until recently, the majority of Arctic sea ice survived at least one summer and often several. But things have changed dramatically, according to a team of University of Colorado, Boulder, scientists led by Charles Fowler. Thin seasonal ice -- ice that melts and re-freezes every year -- makes up about 70 percent of the Arctic sea ice in wintertime, up from 40 to 50 percent in the 1980s and 1990s. Thicker ice, which survives two or more years, now comprises just 10 percent of wintertime ice cover, down from 30 to 40 percent.

According to researchers from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., the maximum sea ice extent for 2008-09, reached on Feb. 28, was 5.85 million square miles. That is 278,000 square miles less than the average extent for 1979 to 2000.

"Ice extent is an important measure of the health of the Arctic, but it only gives us a two-dimensional view of the ice cover," says Walter Meier, research scientist at the center and the University of Colorado, Boulder. "Thickness is important, especially in the winter, because it is the best overall indicator of the health of the ice cover. As the ice cover in the Arctic grows thinner, it grows more vulnerable to melting in the summer."

The Arctic ice cap grows each winter as the sun sets for several months and intense cold sets in. Some of that ice is naturally pushed out of the Arctic by winds, while much of it melts in place during summer. The thicker, older ice that survives one or more summers is more likely to persist through the next summer.

Sea ice thickness has been hard to measure directly, so scientists have typically used estimates of ice age to approximate its thickness. But last year a team of researchers led by Ron Kwok of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., produced the first map of sea ice thickness over the entire Arctic basin.

Using two years of data from NASA's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), Kwok's team estimated thickness and volume of the Arctic Ocean ice cover for 2005 and 2006. They found that the average winter volume of Arctic sea ice contained enough water to fill Lake Michigan and Lake Superior combined.

The older, thicker sea ice is declining and is being replaced with newer, thinner ice that is more vulnerable to summer melt, according to Kwok. His team found that seasonal sea ice averages about 6 feet in thickness, while ice that had lasted through more than one summer averages about 9 feet, though it can grow much thicker in some locations near the coast.

Kwok is currently working to extend the ICESat estimate further, from 2003 to 2008, to see how the recent decline in the area covered by sea ice is mirrored in changes in its volume.

"With these new data on both the area and thickness of Arctic sea ice, we will be able to better understand the sensitivity and vulnerability of the ice cover to changes in climate," Kwok says.

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Observatories to Examine Arctic Changes from Under the Ice

Researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) are venturing this month to the North Pole to deploy instruments that will make year-round observations of the water beneath the Arctic ice cap. Scientists will investigate how the waters in the upper layers of the Arctic Ocean—which insulate surface ice from warmer, deeper waters—are changing from season to season and year to year as global climate fluctuates.

The Arctic expedition is part of a multi-year, multi-institutional program to establish a real-time, autonomous Arctic Observing Network. The WHOI researchers will work out of the North Pole Environmental Observatory, a yearly research camp on the ice that is organized and led by the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center.

Arctic research specialist Rick Krishfield and engineering assistant Kris Newhall will lead the WHOI expedition this spring, deploying two autonomous ice-based observatories between 88° and 90° North. The observatories are similar in design to moored, open-ocean buoys, though they will be anchored to the ice instead of the seafloor.

The instruments will slowly drift with the natural movement of the ice while observing water properties in the top 800 meters of the Arctic Ocean. The buoys are designed to last three years, about the same lifespan as the ice floes that support them.

“The goal of the WHOI observing system is to document and understand annual change through sustained observations of the polar ice pack, the overlying atmosphere, and upper ocean water properties,” says John Toole, principal investigator for the project and a senior scientist in the WHOI Physical Oceanography Department. “Many climate models suggest the Arctic ice cover will melt within 50 years. We want to measure the changes in the water—particularly the layered structure of the ocean—in order to understand what mechanisms might lead the ice cap to melt from below. The impacts for the ecosystem, the regional and global climate, and for commerce would be enormous.”

A key element of WHOI’s contribution to the observing system is the ice-tethered profiler (ITP). Invented by Toole, Krishfield, and colleagues, the ITP climbs up and down a mooring string each day, detecting the temperature, salinity, and oxygen content at various points in the water column. The instrument sends data through the mooring wire to the surface buoy on the ice, which relays the data by satellite phone back to researchers in Woods Hole.

That data is made available to the science community and public within hours via the Internet. In the past, scientists have studied Arctic waters through expeditions on icebreakers and ice-locked ships, or by setting traditional moorings that had to be recovered after months or years of data collection. But few have tried to send Arctic Ocean data back in real time, year-round, for multiple years.

Six WHOI ice-based observatories have been tested in the waters north of Alaska over the past three years, and researchers are confident that they can take the ice-tethered profiler system all the way to the top of the world.

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