Update on last September’s Arctic ice scare.

Last September, NASA created a world wide shock with its announcement that the Arctic summer ice had reached an all-time low. Six months later NASA has updated its announcement at a time when the Arctic ice is usually at its maximum.

The worry is will be Arctic ice be able to recover from 2007’s record lows. Provisional data from NASA indicates that the answer will almost certainly be ‘no it hasn’t’

Their observations indicate that in excess of 70% of the ice in the Arctic region has “grown” since last September. The significance of this figure is that normally ‘new growth’ ice accounts for considerably less than 50% of the ice in the region.

National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, USA spokesman Walter Meier says that “Ice can stay around for up to 10 years,” And “Old ice is really thick, tough as nails, and very resistant to short term melting.” New ice is not thick, not tough - and not resistant to melting”.

This Arctic winter is been considerably colder than the norm, this means that the winter ice has extended out much further than it has done over the last few years.

This is good news, but Mr Meier and his associates say that will take considerably more than one colder than average winter to begin to compensate for huge amount of damage inflicted by last summer’s warmer than usual weather.

They claim that it will take many consecutive colder winter seasons, to redress the damage. And with temperatures rising faster than ever everywhere else around the globe, it looks unlikely that this ‘one off’ trend will continue in the coming years.

The result of this will probably be an ice cap that will melt faster than ever as this new ice is far less resistant to warm weather, than the thicker and more resilient old ice.