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Published online 16 July 2008 |
Nature
454,
266-269
(2008)
| doi:10.1038/454266a
Corrected online: 12 September 2008
News Feature
Climate science: The long summer begins
A research vessel embedded in the thinning Arctic sea ice has a front-row seat for the cryospheric show of the century. Quirin Schiermeier reports from Darnley Bay, Canada.
It is a mild, sunny day in June. Off the coast of far northern Canada, the icebreaker Amundsen is having little trouble ploughing through the land-fast ice.
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I wish to thank the author for this interesting article, as well as for his other similar articles in Nature. I should like to comment the map displaying the sea ice extent on July 10th, 2008. On the map, there appears to be a white area (=ice) also on the Baltic Sea between Finland and Estonia (the Gulf of Finland). This is not true; in fact, this year was the first one (in recent history) with no ice on the Gulf of Finland even in the winter (and the first one with no winter at all in southern Finland). This raises some concern as to the reliability of the map; it would be very interesting to know how the map was obtained and from which source it comes from. Be´st regards, Juha Huttunen, Espoo, FÃnland.
Juha, The sea ice data shown is most likely from passive microwave satellite sensors, such as SSM/I. These sensors have low (25-50 km) spatial resolution. Thus, there can be mixed land/ocean grid cells that can incorrectly show up as ice along the coast. This is likely the case in the region you note. This limitation of the passive microwave data is well-known and does mean that such data should be used for any particular location, particularly near the coast, with great care. However, it provides consistent basin scale estimates suitable for looking at large-scale regional trends and variability, as discussed in this article and the Parkinson and Cavalieri paper (Reference #1). The most recent passive microwave data, and information on the data can be found at: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/. Walt Meier, Research Scientist National Snow and Ice Data Center