327E-346-Arctic Ice

Eliminating NASA's climate research programs is a bit like someone who has a CT scan which reveals a health problem demanding that the CT scan machine be destroyed instead of looking for a cure for themselves. On March 7, 2017 the Arctic Sea ice reached a record low wintertime maximum extent. The maximum Arctic ice cover in 2017 was about a half million square miles smaller than the average for 1981 to 2010. From the first satellite observations in 1979 till 2017 the Arctic sea ice cover has continued to get smaller and thinner making it more easily disrupted by ocean currents, winds, and warmer temperatures than ever before. Even so it appears that it will be a while before ships begin to make the long sought northwest passage from Europe to Asia. At the opposite end of the Earth on March 3, 2017, the end of summer sea ice around Antarctica was at the lowest extent ever observed by satellites. This surprising result followed several decades of moderate sea ice growth. It will take a few more years of data to determine if there has been a significant change in the trend of Antarctic ice sheet growth. Cutting funding for NASA's observations and analysis of the changes happening on Earth will not stop human activity from warming our planet's atmosphere. Get ready, changing the ocean surface from ice to open water is likely to have a significant, complex, and hard to predict impact on weather and climate.