Arctic sea ice cover up 50 percent from 2012

Arctic sea ice has increased 50 percent in volume this year as compared to 2012, according to measurements taken by the European Space Agency's CryoSat satellite.

The volume of sea ice has increased to 9000 cubic kilometers in October 2013 from 6000 cubic kilometers in 2012.

Scientists are encouraged that 90 percent of this increase came from the growth of multiyear ice -- ice that lasts beyond one summer and doesn't melt away -- with the rest coming from first-year ice. Growth in multiyear ice indicates a healthy arctic sea-ice cover. This year's multiyear ice was 20 percent, or about 30 centimeters thicker than last year.

But researchers note the findings may not buck the long-term trend of depleting ice cover.

“It’s estimated that there was around 20,000 cubic kilometres of Arctic sea ice each October in the early 1980s, and so today’s minimum still ranks among the lowest of the past 30 years,” said Professor Andrew Shepherd from University College London, a co-author of the study.

The Cryosat was launched in April 2010 to measure sea-ice thickness across the entire Arctic Ocean and has allowed researchers to monitor the changes more accurately. Despite developing technical glitches which affected the live stream of data from the satellite in October, scientists were able to resolve the problem and present their findings at the American Geophysical Union’s autumn meeting in San Francisco, California.

[ESA] [American Geophysical Union]