The extent/area issue seems to me to be important in the following sense: That the area covered by ice could be an indicator of the mechanical integrity of the ice-cap.
The more broken the ice is year on year the more chance there is for ice-albedo to cause localised warming in the summer-melt period. When re-freezes occur during the winter, would that that re-frozen ice mass then be more likely to melt the following year? In this graph, http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.jpg there seems to be a rate change around 2000 (I stress the word 'seems' I'd prefer more years of data after then to assert a trend). Hopefully this is just a 'blip'. But if it's not, could it be the outcome of physical proesses connected with a loss of perenial ice? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
