Sea ice is frozen sea water that waxes and wanes in response to the cooling and warming of the Arctic throughout the year. The ice pack reaches its greatest extent at the end of the winter, during March, and its lowest point at the end of the summer, usually in mid-September. This point is known as the sea ice minimum.
Arctic sea ice appears to have broken the 2007 record daily extent and is now the lowest in the satellite era. With two to three more weeks left in the melt season, sea ice continues to track below 2007 daily extents.
ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the overseas arm of state-owned Oil & Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), is eyeing stake in Russia’s ambitious Arctic Ocean oil and gas projects with US major ExxonMobil and Italian energy giant ENI.
OVL on May 4 wrote to Russian state oil company Rosneft expressing interest in taking stake in one of the three joint ventures announced to explore for oil and gas beneath Arctic Ocean, sources privy to the development said.
Analyses of 32 yr (1979–2010) of Arctic sea ice extents and areas derived from satellite passive microwave radiometers are presented for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole and for nine Arctic regions. There is an overall negative yearly trend of −51.5 ± 4.1 × 103 km2 yr−1 (−4.1 ± 0.3% decade−1) in sea ice extent for the hemisphere.
Increasing shrub cover on Arctic tundra is linked to climate warming, which is partially amplified by sea ice feedbacks, but the nature of these interactions remains poorly understood. Now research indicates that tundra plant productivity in late spring relates to sea-ice-driven temperature amplification but that the growing season peak is more closely associated with persistent large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns.
This new report released by NOAA looks at extreme weather events that occurred in 2011 & finds 2011 among the 15 warmest since records began in late 1800. Shows human fingerprints identified in more than 2 dozen climate indicators examined by 378 scientists from 48 countries.
