See It Before It’s Gone

Posted by Planet In Distress on July 30, 2025 in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

This post is about ice cover in the Arctic, and the title for this post could be urging you to see it while you can, since there is less and less Arctic sea ice with each passing summer. But that’s not what the title means (and, besides, while summer Arctic sea is steadily declining, the ice returns each winter, though thinner and in successively modest amounts). No, what the title refers to is the fact that the United States is withdrawing access to its ice monitoring data. No longer will the National Snow and Ice Data Center (part of the University of Colorado at Boulder and funded in the main by US Government grants) have access to an array of data that will allow it to measure the affects of our rapidly declining earth systems. That means that no of us will any longer be able to take a look at this page, which I have linked to dozens and dozens of times over the years. As you will see by looking at the page, this action comes when we appear to be setting yet another record low for summer ice in the Arctic.

A declining ice pack in the Arctic, especially the “old” ice which is thick and compressed and quite durable, significantly affects other key earth systems across the planet. the resulting destabilization and slowing of circumpolar winds results in breakouts from the “polar vortex”. The shrinking disparity in temperatures at the equator and arctic means that there is less power available to the “heat engine” which in turn drives our weather patterns. Its a serious situation with impacts across human society. Its the kind of thing we need more information about, now less. And there is also the fact that the closer we come to having an “ice-free” arctic in the summer, the more shipping opportunities there are, with significant commercial impacts.

So with all that, you’d think more climate information would be good. But no, the current administration is curtailing the availability of critical climate information at every point it can. For my own part, I’m keenly interested in knowing if we set a record this year for lowest ice pack ever recorded. We are on track to do so, or at least to place a very close second. Will we do it? Will we set a new record? Now we’ll never know.