Warmer Oceans, Decreasing Sea Ice, Warmer Oceans, etc.

"Hey! Where the hell has all the sea ice gone?"

• Oceans have been hiding a lot of Earth's warming by burying it in the deep sea. The deep waters are now surfacing and melting ice on the Western Antarctic Peninsula. The trend means that we're already locked into long term melting and sea level rise.

Graphs are from a "Real Climate" update of model - data comparisons.

Artic Sea Ice Retreats

This map shows the extent of sea ice on September 17, 2008, measured by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite.

The extent on September 17 was clearly much smaller than normal. Although this is not the first year the Northwest Passage has been navigable, it is the first year on record that both the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route, on the opposite side of the Arctic, were both open.

For more information, go to NASA's Earth Observatory.