(CTV) And with several weeks left in the melt season, 2008 could still surpass September 2007 for the lowest amount of sea ice since satellite measurements were first taken in 1979.
At last measure on Aug. 26, Arctic sea ice coverage was at 5.26 million square kilometers -- a decline of 2.06 million square kilometres from the beginning of August.
In September of last year, a record low was recorded, with 5.69 million square kilometres of sea ice recorded.
It's not a benchmark that Stroeve is proud of, but she's also not surprised by the chilling picture the numbers provide.
"I guess the main thing people should understand is this is just a continuation of that long term downward trend. I think whether or not we break the record it's just the continuation of what we've been seeing since 2002, where every year we're losing ice and we're not recovering at all," she said.
How a scientist can claim to be "proud" or otherwise about data I fail to understand. Information is information unless you were the one who created the data; built a big mirror in space and melted all the Arctic ice your own self, mayhap.
And again with the drowning polar bears:
Observers from the U.S. federal government doing a whale survey in mid August reported seeing nine polar bears swimming off Alaska's northwest coast.
The bears were between 20 and 100 kilometres from shore. Some were swimming north, apparently trying to reach the polar ice shelf, which was more than 600 kilometres distant.
While polar bears have been known to swim 100 kilometres, but can often become dangerously weak from the ordeal.
Stroeve said she has also heard reports of seals being spotted further north than ever before as they travel further and further north to find ice.
"It's scary. It's such a huge change that's happening very quickly and it makes me very sad because I just can't see how the species that rely on the ice can survive this," Stroeve said.
They survived the last time this happened, and unless we kill them off (more likely) they probably will again. If a bear is capable of swimming 100 km, it suggests that it has evolved in an environment where that can be necessary. The way to be sure is to throw a Grizzly in the ocean and see how it does, but somehow I don't see that happening, so we may never know. I will also point out that these observers have no idea why these bears are doing what they're doing; more speculation. As for seals, there are lots of them where there isn't any year-round ice so they may decline, but the little buggers were pretty good swimmers last I heard, and quite capable of pulling up on a beach.
I am not claiming that this is not happening, just suggesting that the hyperbole is well, hyperbole. Things are cyclic, and because things are trending one way does NOT mean it will necessarily keep going that way. It's been getting colder in the Antarctic at the same time it's melting up north, but the data is scarce and this part goes back and forth. A key thing though is that I've not seen anything creditable showing me that Greenland is melting like the pack ice, so there's still a big chunk of high albedo surface up there year-round.
I'm quite tired of hearing what "could" happen. All sorts of stuff could happen, but the chicken littles who keep warning of catastrophic sea level rise have yet to be even partly vindicated. If the NW Passage opens up that's a geopolitical problem, especially for us, but otherwise a slightly warmer northern hemisphere is the sort of thing that both we and the animaux can adapt to.
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