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The Antartic had been fairing pretty well with some slight gains up until this year but this was a tremendous loss. The Artic has been in a steady and rapid decline for decades. None of this bodes well for coastal communities particularly on the east coast and the gulf. A loss of sea ice equivalent to the size of Mexico is rather stunning, add in the loss of glaciers and this is a major catastrophe.
So maybe 30, 50 years, who knows but it could at some point this could accelerate. We are in new territory.
Quote:
Sea Ice Extent Sinks to Record Lows at Both Poles
Arctic sea ice appears to have reached on March 7 a record low wintertime maximum extent, according to scientists at NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado. And on the opposite side of the planet, on March 3 sea ice around Antarctica hit its lowest extent ever recorded by satellites at the end of summer in the Southern Hemisphere, a surprising turn of events after decades of moderate sea ice expansion.
On Feb. 13, the combined Arctic and Antarctic sea ice numbers were at their lowest point since satellites began to continuously measure sea ice in 1979. Total polar sea ice covered 6.26 million square miles (16.21 million square kilometers), which is 790,000 square miles (2 million square kilometers) less than the average global minimum extent for 1981-2010 – the equivalent of having lost a chunk of sea ice larger than Mexico.
The Antartic had been fairing pretty well with some slight gains up until this year but this was a tremendous loss. The Artic has been in a steady and rapid decline for decades. None of this bodes well for coastal communities particularly on the east coast and the gulf. A loss of sea ice equivalent to the size of Mexico is rather stunning, add in the loss of glaciers and this is a major catastrophe.
So maybe 30, 50 years, who knows but it could at some point this could accelerate. We are in new territory.
When? The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are massive; it will probably take centuries for them to completely disappear. But sea level rises from significant ice loss will start long before that.
When? The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are massive; it will probably take centuries for them to completely disappear. But sea level rises from significant ice loss will start long before that.
They are massive so it's tough to predict since there is so little experience, there was a huge fracture on one of the ice sheets in Antarctica. Calving, where there ice formations split, is very unpredictable but this will have an large effect on present day sea levels.
The Antartic had been fairing pretty well with some slight gains up until this year but this was a tremendous loss. The Artic has been in a steady and rapid decline for decades. None of this bodes well for coastal communities particularly on the east coast and the gulf. A loss of sea ice equivalent to the size of Mexico is rather stunning, add in the loss of glaciers and this is a major catastrophe.
So maybe 30, 50 years, who knows but it could at some point this could accelerate. We are in new territory.
good. then we will be at what is globally considered NORMAL
since there is still ice on both caps, we are by definition in an ice age, as the ice has not fully disappeared
what we don't want is a full pledged ice age where 1/2 of the earth is covered in ice...animals/mammals/ and most plants CAN NOT survive an ice age
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