Below are links to media coverage, blogs, and other articles relevant to arctic sea ice and the Sea Ice Outlook.

2009

Feds to Decide on Listing Ice Seals as Threatened
Dan Joling, Associated Press
28 September 2009 - A federal agency must decide within three weeks whether spotted seals, which depend on sea ice off Alaska's coast, should be listed as a threatened or endangered species.
In addition, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agreed to decide by Nov. 1, 2010, whether two other ice-dependent seals, ringed seals and bearded seals, should be listed.

August Seas Warmest in at Least 120 Years
Andy Revkin, New York Times' Dot Earth
16 September 2009 - The National Climatic Data Center has released its review of  worldwide sea surface temperatures for August and for the stretch from June through August and finds that both the month and the "summer" (as looked at from the Northern Hemisphere) were the warmest at least since 1880, when such records were first systematically compiled. {more}

Arctic Shortcut Beckons Shippers as Ice Thaws
Andrew E. Kramer and Andrew C. Revkin, New York Times
10 September 2009 - For hundreds of years, mariners have dreamed of an arctic shortcut that would allow them to speed trade between Asia and the West. Two German ships are poised to complete that transit for the first time, aided by the retreat of arctic ice that scientists have linked to global warming.*

The ships started their voyage in South Korea in late July and will begin the last leg of the trip this week, leaving a Siberian port for Rotterdam in the Netherlands carrying 3,500 tons of construction materials.

Scientists Predict Another Year of Major Arctic Ice Loss
Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service
19 August 2009 - Two scientific reports released this week are predicting another year of severe ice loss for the Arctic, though atmospheric patterns and cool temperatures in some regions -- including Hudson Bay -- are expected to prevent the world from witnessing the kind of record-smashing retreat seen in 2007.*

The new data are contained in sea ice studies issued Tuesday by the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center and Wednesday by the Alaska-based Arctic Research Consortium, which has collected 13 forecasts from experts in several countries, including Canada.

Vast Expanses of Arctic Ice Melt in Summer Heat
Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press
10 August 2009 - The Arctic Ocean has given up tens of thousands more square miles (square kilometers) of ice on Sunday in a relentless summer of melt, with scientists watching through satellite eyes for a possible record low polar ice cap.

Arctic Sea Ice Extent Tracking Below 2008
National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)
22 July 2009 - During the first half of July, arctic sea ice extent declined more
quickly than in 2008, but not as fast as in 2007. As in recent years,
melt onset was earlier than the 1979 to 2000 average. International sea
ice researchers expect another low September minimum ice extent, but
they do not yet know if it will fall below the 2007 record.

Arctic Ice May Shrink Less After North Pole's Late Thaw
CBC News
21 July 2009 - A late thaw at the North Pole has some people optimistic that arctic sea ice won't shrink to record lows this summer.

So far, observations show less ice north of Alaska, in the Barents Sea and in Baffin Bay. There are also lower concentrations of ice in the Canadian Beaufort Sea.

More than 20 groups from around the world are contributing information to the Sea Ice Outlook project.

Arctic Sea Ice Images Derived From Classified Data Should Be Made Public, According To A New Report
ScienceDaily
17 July 2009 - Hundreds of images derived from classified data that could be used to better understand rapid loss and transformation of arctic sea ice should be immediately released and disseminated to the scientific research community, says a new report from the National Research Council. {more}

NASA Airborne Expedition Chases Arctic Sea Ice Questions
NASA
16 July 2009 - A small NASA aircraft completed its first successful science flight Thursday as part of an expedition to study the receding arctic sea ice and improve understanding of its life cycle and the long-term stability of the arctic ice cover.
More on Thinning Arctic Sea Ice
Andy Revkin, New York Times' Dot Earth
8 July 2009 - I sent some questions to some of the authors of the new study showing how much the thickness and total volume of Arctic sea ice have declined since 2003. Here's a response from two of them, Ron Kwok and Jay Zwally of NASA. {more}

Thin Ice the Norm in Warming Arctic
Andy Revkin, New York Times' Dot Earth
7 July 2009 - The thick durable sea ice that routinely cloaked much of the Arctic Ocean in colder decades in the 20th century is increasingly relegated to a few clotted places along northern Canada and Greenland, according to the latest satellite analysis of the warming region. {more}

New NASA Satellite Survey Reveals Dramatic Arctic Sea Ice Thinning
NASA

7 July 2009 - Arctic sea ice thinned dramatically between the winters of 2004 and 2008, with thin seasonal ice replacing thick older ice as the dominant type for the first time on record. The new results, based on data from a NASA Earth-orbiting spacecraft, provide further evidence for the rapid, ongoing transformation of the Arctic's ice cover.

More Polar Bear Populations in Decline
Andy Revkin, New York Times' Dot Earth
6 July 2009 - There is rising concern among polar bear biologists that the big recent summertime retreats of sea ice in the Arctic are already harming some populations of these seal-hunting predators. That was one conclusion of the Polar Bear Specialist Group, a network of bear experts who met last week in Copenhagen to review the latest data (and data gaps) on the 19 discrete populations of polar bears around the Arctic. {more}

The Least Sea Ice in 800 Years
Insciences
1 July 2009 - New research, which reconstructs the extent of ice in the sea between
Greenland and Svalbard from the 13th century to the present, indicates
that there has never been so little sea ice as there is now.

**NOAA: Fourth Warmest May for Globe **
*National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration *
17 June 2009 - The combined average global land and ocean surface temperatures for May 2009 ranked fourth warmest since worldwide records began in 1880, according to an analysis by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, NC. {more}

**Melting Greenland Ice Sheets May Threaten Northeast United States and Canada **
Science Daily
28 May 2009 - Melting of the Greenland ice sheet this century may drive more water than previously thought toward the already threatened coastlines of New York, Boston, Halifax, and other cities in the northeastern United States and Canada, according to new research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). {more}

**A New Insight into the Decline of the Arctic Sea Ice Cover **
Physorg.com
14 May 2009 - The mechanical behavior of the arctic sea ice cover appears to favor its rapid decline. Scientists from INSU-CNRS, Université J. Fourier and Université de Savoie, France, have analyzed the trajectories of drifting buoys anchored in the ice and found that the mean drift rate and deformation rate of arctic sea ice has strongly increased over the last three decades.

Arctic Explorers Find More Evidence of Global Thaw
Reuters
13 May 2009 - A team of British adventurers measuring ice conditions in the Canadian Arctic said on Wednesday they did not find the thicker, older ice that scientists expected to be there. Instead they found only the thinner, predominantly first-year ice that is likely to melt in summer months.

A Slow Start to the Spring Melt Season
*National Snow and Ice Data Center *
4 May 2009 - Arctic sea ice extent declined quite slowly in April; as a result, total ice extent is now close to the mean extent for the reference period (1979 to 2000). The thin spring ice cover nevertheless remains vulnerable to summer melt.

New Data Show Rapid Arctic Ice Decline
By Juliet Eilperin and Mary Beth Sheridan
7 April 2009 - The Arctic sea ice cover continues to shrink and become thinner, according to satellite measurements and other data released yesterday, providing further evidence that the region is warming more rapidly than scientists had expected. {more}

Arctic Sea Ice Younger, Thinner as Melt Season Begins
National Snow and Ice Data Center
Arctic sea ice extent has begun its seasonal decline towards the September minimum. Ice extent through the winter was similar to that of recent years, but lower than the 1979 to 2000 average. More importantly, the melt season has begun with a substantial amount of thin first-year ice, which is vulnerable to summer melt.

2008

Most Experts Foresee a Repeat, at Least, of 2007 Arctic Sea Ice Loss
By Andrew C. Revkin, Dot Earth / New York Times
11 June 2008 - Fourteen research teams studying the impacts of warming on the Arctic Ocean have issued independent projections of how the sea ice will behave this summer, and 11 of them foresee an ice retreat at least as extraordinary as last year's or even more dramatic. {more}

Rapid Ice Retreat Threatens Arctic Interior
By Hannah Hoag, reporting for Nature Reports: Climate Change
26 June 2008 - The rapid decline of sea ice could accelerate inland warming over the arctic region, radically transforming the landscape. {more}

Little Ice But No Record Low
By Frank Kauker, Ruediger Gerdes and Michael Karcher, DAMOCLES researchers
4 July 2008 - A revised outlook for the 2008 arctic summer sea ice minimum shows ice extent will be below the 2005 level but not likely to beat the record year of 2007. {more}

Websites with Links to Sea Ice Outlook

AWI and OASys Arctic Sea Ice Outlook 2008
http://www.awi.de http://www.oasys-research.de/news-folder/Outlook

Environmental Research Web
http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/yournews/35736

Expedition Route: Kangerlussuaq to Disko Bay
http://www.capefarewell.com/diskobay/kangerlussuaq/

NOAA Arctic Change
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/arctic-zone/detect/ice-seaice.shtml

Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR)
http://www.scar.org/2014

Texas A&M University News | First Monthly Sea Ice Outlook