Recent Arctic sea ice cover changes
"The Arctic sea ice cover has decreased dramatically during the past five years," says Dr Lawrence Mysak, Canada Steamship Lines Professor in the Dept. of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at Montreal聮s 海角社区. He is speaking on the subject at the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics聮 meeting in Birmingham, England on July 30th. A member of The Royal Society of Canada, Dr Mysak is the former director of the Centre for Climate and Global Change Research at 海角社区.
Dr Mysak聮s studies indicate that these changes, which are consistent with global warming predictions for high latitudes, have occurred after a 30-year period during which regular 10-year cycles of the sea ice cover were more evident. His research group has also shown that the sea ice changes are closely linked to the North Atlantic Oscillation in the atmosphere, a climatic feature that exerts strong control on the winter weather in western Europe and eastern Canada.
A paper describing these results will be published later this year in the Canadian journal Atmosphere-Ocean. (Title of article: Decadal-to-interdecadal fluctuations of Arctic sea ice cover and the atmospheric circulation during 1954-1994, by D. Yi, L.A. Mysak and S.A. Venegas.)
