The New York Times has an article discussing some of the complex mechanics being considered in scientists’ review of the record low ice coverage in the Arctic this summer:
Now the six-month dark season has returned to the North Pole. In the deepening chill, new ice is already spreading over vast stretches of the Arctic Ocean. Astonished by the summer’s changes, scientists are studying the forces that exposed one million square miles of open water — six Californias — beyond the average since satellites started measurements in 1979.[...]
Complicating the picture, the striking Arctic change was as much a result of ice moving as melting, many say. A new study, led by Son Nghiem at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and appearing this week in Geophysical Research Letters, used satellites and buoys to show that winds since 2000 had pushed huge amounts of thick old ice out of the Arctic basin past Greenland. The thin floes that formed on the resulting open water melted quicker or could be shuffled together by winds and similarly expelled, the authors said.
The article goes on from there, including providing a taste in the complex interrelationships of how warmer temperatures affect ice melt, and how wind blowing “old ice” out of the Arctic gyre causes thinner, easier-to-melt new ice to form next winter, which aggravates the problem.
It’s somewhat ominous to think about…but also for those of us who like observing complex systems and models…it is fascinating as well.