NASA Studies an Unusual Arctic Warming Event

Winter temperatures are soaring in the Arctic for the fourth winter in a row. The heat, accompanied by moist air, is entering the Arctic not only through the sector of the North Atlantic Ocean that lies between Greenland and Europe, as it has done in previous years, but is also coming from the North Pacific through the Bering Strait.

“We have seen winter warming events before, but they’re becoming more frequent and more intense,” said Alek Petty, a sea ice researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Scientists are waiting to see how much this heat wave will impact the wintertime sea ice maximum extent, which has been shrinking in the past decades and has hit record lows each of the past three years. The sea ice levels are already at record lows or near-record lows in several areas of the Arctic. Another exceptional event this winter is the opening up of the sea ice cover north of Greenland, releasing heat from the ocean to the atmosphere and making the sea ice more vulnerable to further melting.

“This is a region where we have the thickest multi-year sea ice and expect it to not be mobile, to be resilient,” Petty said. “But now this ice is moving pretty quickly, pushed by strong southerly winds and probably affected by the warm temperatures, too.”

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Kathryn Mersmann (USRA): Lead Producer
Maria-Jose Vinas Garcia (Telophase Corp): Lead Writer
Alek A. Petty (University of Maryland): Scientist

Music: Crystal Light by Michael Holborn [PRS], William Henries [PRS]

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[jsmythib]

Sounds good. I cant afford oil for heat anymore so it must be all the wood I burn! :)

[ericbauer]

It's just my Uncle Jack and his phenomenal diesel space heater :P

[walkerjian]

So this may or may not be due to polar vortex splitting, which may or may not be due to global warming, which may or may not exist, and may or may not even be defined in a scientifically meaningful way. The essence of science is uncertainty, and the only thing certain about the science here is the measurements, the models the measurements are being applied to are another matter, AND what is most certain is that there are conspiracies on 'both sides' of the 'debate' that are being exploited most lucratively by all playas in the game. Careers are had, money is made on 'gree(d)n' (if you are smart fast and dirty) and jobs and manufacturing bases of entire western democracies are being eroded and translocated elsewhere, all based on, what is at the moment, opinion...

[rkpetry]

...half interesting—could it be a global-thermal-cycle-doubling reaching further north, high, and returning as a lower,  south-blowing 'Titanic' iceberg-calving event, (1912 was another sunspot-cooling era, and before-that early-1800's, and we're ending the '200-year-cycle')...