Antarctic Sea Ice Hits Record...High?

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Daniel Stone, National Geographic
October 13, 2012

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121013-antarctica-sea-ice-record-high-science-global-warming?source=sailthru


Summary

Despite the current global warming, Scientists report that Antarctica was surrounded by the largest amount of sea ice ever recorded. Antarctica was surrounded by 7.51 million square miles of sea ice when satellites recorded the sea ice. This is surprising because one would expect that as the temperature of the earth increases, the amount of sea ice would decrease. This is happening in the arctic, but differences between the arctic and the antarctic cause the latter to have a slight (~1%) increase in sea ice. One of the biggest differences that factor into sea ice levels is the fact that the entire world is increasing in temperature, but Antarctica is increasing at a slower rate than the rest of the world therefore it is a lot colder than the rest of the world. Another reason that you see sea ice depleting in the arctic and not the antarctic is that the arctic is and ocean that is connected to the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, therefore causing it to have a normal rate of warming therefore causing it to be warmer than Antarctica and loose sea ice easily. Antarctica however, is a continent that is much colder and much more isolated. Therefore its climate is very different from the arctic. Overall this doesn't show good news. Scientists have figured and predicted that Antarctica would follow the arctic, but it doesn't fit with there model. However it still shows that the planet is warming up.

Sea Ice Levels Oct. 13, 2012

Connection

This article connects with our unit on ecology. It mainly connects with the ideas of global warming that we talked about. When the climate warms there is a loss of sea ice, in this case since the antarctic is cooler than the arctic you don't see that at this moment. Perhaps in the near future, if we don't fix the pollution problem, we will begin to see an decrease in sea  ice in Antarctica