New research reveals the volume of Arctic sea ice increased by a third after the summer of 2013, which was characterized by unusually low temperatures that prevented ice from melting.
These findings suggest ice pack in the Northern hemisphere is even more sensitive to small weather and temperature changes than we thought, University College London reported.
To make their findings, the researchers looked at 88 million measurements of sea ice thickness recorded by the European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 mission between 2010 and 2014. They determined there was a 14 percent decrease in the volume of summertime Arctic sea ice between 2010 and 2012, but in 2013 the ice concentration jumped a whopping 41 percent.
"The summer of 2013 was much cooler than recent years with temperatures typical of those seen in the late 1990s. This allowed thick sea ice to persist northwest of Greenland because there were fewer days when it could melt. Although models have suggested that the volume of Arctic sea ice is in long term decline, we know now that it can recover by a significant amount if the melting season is cut short," said lead author and PhD student, Rachel Tilling from the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM), UCL Earth & Planetary Sciences.
Until CryoSat-2 was launched, it was more difficult to measure the volume of Arctic sea ice, especially across the entire region. Now, we have the ability to peer below the water to get a better idea of what's going on.
"Understanding what controls the amount of Arctic sea ice takes us one step closer to making reliable predictions of how long it will last, which is important because it is a key component of Earth's climate system. Although the jump in volume means that the region is unlikely to be ice free this summer, we still expect temperatures to rise in the future, and so the events of 2013 will have simply wound the clock back a few years on the long-term pattern of decline. Our goal is to make sure we do not lose this unique capability to monitor Arctic sea ice when the mission ends," said co-author Professor Andy Shepherd, Professor of Earth Observation at UCL and at the University of Leeds.
In the future, the researchers plan to use CryoSat-2 to further analyze changes in ice thickness to help improve future climate models.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Nature Geoscience.
