Cooler Year Fails to Shift Long-Term Trend of Arctic Sea Ice Melting 

By Christa Marshall and ClimateWire 

Studies have shown that this year's ice cover has dramatically changed, when compared to the last decades. It has been moved to the sixth- lowest of Arctic Sea ice. Scientist are now worried about what is really going on with ice melting and how weather is all affecting this too. In addition, scientists need to look more into the effects because they need to look at the future of animals and humans. Scientist have said that the sixth place ranking is not predicted to change but scientists need to look more into this. 

A scientist at, The National Snow and Ice Data Center, explained that we were below the amounts of 2009, after analyzing the ice on September 16th. The center quoted, "As is typical for this time of year, winds or currents can compact or spread apart the ice, resulting in small daily fluctuations". The ice cover is a shocking fifty percent more than last year. This indicates a problem and scientists are really concerned about future effects. Because of the warmer temperatures throughout the Earth, this means loss of ice in the future. An oceanographer, James Overland, talks about how the Arctic Ocean is becoming more acidic because of these warmer temperatures animals in the Arctic are at risk. James Overland has also been studying ice-free summers and what the future holds by 2030. In addition, Overland made a good conclusion about ice thickness and how the volume of the ice stays somewhat the same, even though there might be different things occurring in the Arctic. Lastly, the big storm last year had a long-term effect on the temperatures, which resulted in warm water that was carried to the Arctic, which contributed to the melting ice. 



http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cooler-year-fails-to-shift-long-term-trend-of-arctic-sea-ice-melting