LONDON, June 5 — Sea ice in the Arctic’s coastal regions may be thinning up to twice as fast as previously thought, according to a new study, with worrying implications for climate change.
“We believe our new calculations are a major step forward in terms of more accurately interpreting the data we have from satellites,” said UCL professor Julienne Stroeve, who co-authored the study published in“We hope this work can be used to better assess the performance of climate models that forecast the effects of long-term climate change in the Arctic,” she said.
Scientists had adjusted for this using a map of snow depth in the Arctic that UCL said did not account for the impact of climate change. “Our calculations account for this declining snow depth for the first time, and suggest the sea ice is thinning faster than we thought.”The researchers used a European Space Agency satellite to time how long it takes for radar waves to bounce back from the ice, allowing them to calculate its height above the water and infer the ice’s total thickness.
The combined results allowed the scientists to gauge the overall rate of decline in ice thickness, as well as its variability from year to year.
When reading news like this look for what they are not talking about. - What about the antartic? The result of their findings should be peer reviewed and open for all to see -where is it? Are you telling us what to think?