Antarctic sea ice is INCREASING: Big freeze breaks records - but scientists claim the rise is caused by global warming

Home »Antarctic sea ice is INCREASING: Big freeze breaks records - but scientists claim the rise is caused by global warming

Antarctic sea ice is INCREASING: Big freeze breaks records - but scientists claim the rise is caused by global warming

Posted by sciencetech-blog on Monday, September 15, 2014 Label:

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Sea ice cover in the Antarctic is now at its highest level since records began.

Satellite images show 7.7 million square miles (20 million sq km) of ice surrounding the continent.

But rather than disproving global warming, scientists claim that this growth may in fact be caused by it.

Satellite images taken recently show 7.7 million square miles (20 million square kilometres) of sea around the continent.Rather than disproving global warming, scientists claim that the growth in sea ice is caused by it

The ice has broken records on about 150 days this year, showing that it is gaining much greater coverage than in previous years.

The area of sea ice seen from space is roughly double the size of the Antarctic continent and about three times the size of Australia.

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Dr Guy Williams, a sea ice specialist at University of Tasmania told The Conversation that the new records add to an 'exciting' puzzle for climate scientists.

Each record-breaking year is different due to variations in seasonal weather— 'it's those differences that will tell us something,' he said.

Trends in sea ice duration, 1979-2010, showing large regional variations. Rather than disproving global warming, some scientists claim that the growth in sea ice may in fact be caused by it

Westerly winds, which flow around Antarctica, are speeding up and moving south. This is thought to be linked to an increase in greenhouse gases and an increase in sea ice

The growth of sea ice isn't even, however. The region west of the Antarctic Peninsula, for instance, shows a large decline in sea ice. Conversely, in areas such as the Ross Sea, sea ice is increasing.

According to James Whitmore at The Conversation, there are two main theories to explain the changes in Antarctic sea ice.

The first is that westerly winds, which flow around Antarctica, are speeding up and moving south. This is thought to be linked to an increase in greenhouse gases and an increase in sea ice.

The second theory is that sea ice forms easier due to the colder and fresher melt water from Antarctica's melting glaciers and ice sheets.

WHILE SEA ICE IS INCREASING, ANTARCTIC GLACIERS ARE MELTING

Despite sea ice increasing glaciers in the northern Antarctic Peninsula are melting faster than ever before, warns new research.

And small glaciers in that area could disappear within 200 years, according to the study.

Researchers warned that increased snowfall will not prevent the continued melting, and the 'unprecedented' glacier recession will result in 'significant' contributions to sea level rises.

An international team of researchers, led by Dr Bethan Davies, from Royal Holloway, University of London, has discovered that small glaciers that end on land around the Antarctic Peninsula are highly vulnerable to slight changes in air temperature and may be at risk of disappearing within 200 years.

The scientists said that temperatures are currently rising rapidly in the Antarctic Peninsula, and because warmer air holds more moisture, the amount of snowfall has also increased.

Some researchers have suggested that this may offset the melting of the glaciers, however this study found that just a small rise in air temperature increased melting so much that even large amounts of extra snowfall could not prevent glacier recession.

Another theory for increasing sea ice in the South Pole is that sea ice forms easier due to the colder and fresher melt water from Antarctica's melting glaciers and ice sheets

'This is an area covered by sea ice which we've never seen from space before,' Jan Lieser from the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre told ABC News.

'Thirty-five years ago the first satellites went up which were reliably telling us what area, two dimensional area, of sea ice was covered and we've never seen that before, that much area.'

However, as the area covered in sea ice around Antarctica expands, scientists claim the ice on the continent is continuing to melt.

Researchers are now using autonomous underwater robots to measure the thickness of Antarctic sea ice with much greater accuracy over bigger areas.

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