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[ocean sounds in background] Here’s the latest from EarthNow…

On August 26, 2012 the Arctic sea ice extent dropped below its previous record lowest daily extent observed in 2007. 

This display is a comparison of sea ice extent between the recent August 26th sea ice extent with the previous minimum from 2007.

The green line marks the 2007 sea ice minimum.

The pale grey mass shows the August 26th ice cover.

Note that Greenland is colored whiter to indicate snow and is not included in sea ice calculations because it’s a land mass.

In 2007, the weather was warmer and perfect for melting ice.

This summer, temperatures in the Arctic were unremarkable: slightly warmer in some areas and slightly cooler in others. The biggest reason for the loss of sea ice was a combination of a thinner ice sheet plus a large storm in early August in the East Siberian Sea the helped break up some of the ice.

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the Arctic Ocean used to be covered by a thick ice mass that stayed there for many years. Now it’s becoming more of a seasonal ice cover with large areas melting in summer.

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These red and blue data show Earth’s temperature anomalies for August 2012. These are the average August temperatures with the climatology for August subtracted so you can easily see areas that were warmer than normal in red while areas that were colder than normal are blue.

August, 2012 was the fourth warmest August on record, with a combined land and ocean temperature more than 1oF warmer than the 20th century average August temperature of 60oF. 

For the United States, the 8 month period from January through August was the warmest first 8 months of any year on record.

Warmest temperature anomalies extended from Europe throughCentral Asia, where Spain recorded its second warmest August since they began measuring.

At the north pole, the Arctic sea ice extent in August was the smallest on record at 38.5% below average.

Meanwhile, at the south pole, the Antarctic sea ice extent in August was almost 2% above its average extent.

Siberia and the eastern Asia were cooler than normal.

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