NASA: Sea ice area still dropping

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Maybe what we need to warm things up around here is a good, old-fashioned climate-change debate.

NASA released this image today (strongly suggest you click on it to get the larger image) showing the difference between Arctic sea ice in September and the sea ice in the same location in March.

The yellow lines mark the the median sea ice extent observed by satellite sensors in September and March from 1979-2000, according to NASA.

The amount of sea ice in March was the second lowest recorded during that time. The amount in September was the third-lowest.

New data showed that the amount of older, thicker ice had increased slightly over last year. “Data through the third week of March shows an increase in sea ice one to two years old, and older than two years old, compared to recent years,” NSIDC noted. “However, the amount of older ice remains much lower than in the mid-1980s, and there is still almost none of the oldest ice (older than four years) that used to dominate much of the Arctic Ocean.”