During the first half of the 20th century, the Arctic sea-ice cover was thought to be in a near-steady seasonal cycle, reaching an area of roughly 15 million km2 each March and retreating to 7 million km2 each September. Ice thick enough to survive the melt season, termed perennial or multiyear ice (MYI), adds to the ice cover. A large fraction of MYI typically remained in the Arctic Basin for several years and grew to an equilibrium thickness of about 3.5 m—melting half a meter at the surface from June through August and growing by about half a meter at the bottom from October through March. In the late 1970s, MYI occupied more than two-thirds of the surface area of the Arctic Basin, with first-year ice (FYI) covering the remaining one-third. FYI is the thinner, seasonal ice that fills cracks in the ice cover and grows on the...
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1 April 2011
April 01 2011
The thinning of Arctic sea ice
The surplus heat needed to explain the loss of Arctic sea ice during the past few decades is on the order of 1 W/m2. Observing, attributing, and predicting such a small amount of energy remain daunting problems.
Physics Today 64 (4), 36–41 (2011);
Citation
Ronald Kwok, Norbert Untersteiner; The thinning of Arctic sea ice. Physics Today 1 April 2011; 64 (4): 36–41. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3580491
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