A composite animation of the Arctic Ocean's seasonal sea ice retreat in 2007 (from the Cryosphere Today – the original 200mb file is here). To my layman's eye, the rate of melting between July and September is staggering.
I've just been sent a link (thanks Ann!) to a stunning set of photographs by Camille Seaman entitled "The Last Iceberg". They were taken at 78° North around Svalbard and Greenland in the Arctic, and at 78° South off the coast of Antarctica, as part of a larger series called "Melting Away".
In my (admittedly amateur) experience, it's surprisingly hard to take evocative photos of lumps of ice, but Camille has produced some utterly haunting works of art.
"Nick Cave once sang, 'All things move toward their end.' Icebergs give the impression of doing just that, in their individual way much as humans do; they have been created of unique conditions and shaped by their environments to live a brief life in a manner solely their own. Some go the distance traveling for many years slowly being eroded by time and the elements; others get snagged on the rocks and are whittled away by persistent currents. Still others dramatically collapse in fits of passion and fury.
The Last Iceberg chronicles just a handful of the many thousands of icebergs that are currently headed to their end. I approach the images of icebergs as portraits of individuals, much like family photos of my ancestors. I seek a moment in their life in which they convey their unique personality, some connection to our own experience and a glimpse of their soul which endures."
Last up, I had the pleasure of having lunch today with the inimitable Kenton Cool (arguably Britain's top mountain guide, one of the world's top alpinists, and the only Briton to reach the summit of Everest five times). Sat in my local pub on a grey London afternoon with our pints of bitter, the polar icecaps and the high peaks of the Himalayas couldn't have seemed further away, but the conversation sparked some rather ambitious ideas. One of those moments, and one of those days that almost left me pinching myself, and that reminded me just how lucky I am to be doing this stuff for a living.
Explorer's Arctic quest pole-axed
A British explorer who plans to trek to the North Pole to measure its melting ice cap has been criticised… Pen Hadow was accused by Green Party MEP Caroline Lucas of using the quest for the sake of an adventure. "Exploration of the Arctic should not be seen as a glamorous adventure but rather needs to be serious and co-ordinated scientific effort".
I find Lucas's argument baffling: the world desperately needs more field scientists, and if we're to have a hope of engaging a generation that are less in touch with nature than ever before, then I can't see how making exploration look more boring is going to help. In a world full of vapid celebrity, footballer's wives and pop stars staggering out of rehab, a glamourous and inspiring spokesperson or two is just what climate science needs right now.
It's been all over the news recently, but I've just stumbled across this incredible hi-res image from the European Space Agency's ENVISAT (which has been monitoring Arctic sea ice levels for nearly 30 years), showing the route of the Northwest passage (the orange line) free of sea ice for the first time in history.
According to Leif Toudal Pedersen from the Danish National Space Centre, the ice-covered area (light green in this image) is currently around 3 million sq km, which is about 1 million sq km less than the previous minimum levels recorded in 2005/6. Over the last ten years the sea ice coverage has shrunk by around 100,000 sq km per year, so a drop of 1 million sq km in just one year is an enormous change.
"The strong reduction in just one year certainly raises flags that the ice (in summer) may disappear much sooner than expected and that we urgently need to understand better the processes involved."
That's a difference of 1.9 million square kilometres, a missing area of sea ice area the size of Mexico. By my rusty arithmetic, that's 28 square centimetres of melted ice for every human being on the planet. Here's an idea of what 28 sq cm looks like.
I've just been sent a link (thanks Ann!) to 
