Sea ice 22 February 2020
Sea ice 22 March 2020
I thought I was finished but just one last post! You might like to see how quickly the sea freezes around our frozen south. Reassuring really in these uncertain time of reports on changing climate. Interesting to compare the concentration of sea ice reported on 22 February (top image) when we were still in the Ross Sea happily sailing along the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf before heading north out of the Ross Sea, compare that with the report 22 March (bottom image) 4 weeks later. Had we tarried longer in the Ross Sea we may not have got out like explorers in the past such as Mawson, who were iced in for winter which in Antarctica last for 9 months, at least the sea stays frozen all that time!
I've circled the Ross Sea in blue-black and the Antarctic Peninsula in green. The large purple-pink blobs are high concentrations of sea ice - pack ice! The sea beside the Peninsula is the Weddell Sea (top of each picture); we were in the Ross Sea (circled).
In the West Antarctic, east from Australia (top left of each pic), the land mass overall is not as 'deep' nor is the ice cap, and the Peninsula jutting as it does north beyond the Antarctic Circle, is vulnerable to different weather and sea conditions because of those factors. Of course when 'they' talk about temperatures in Antarctica increasing and ice melting etc, it is almost always the Peninsula they are referring to.
I leave you with another composite image taken 40 years apart in September both times which illustrates this. I offer you these images simply as facts with no political message or judgement attached. It is for information only.
You can track the state of the ice in both Antarctica and the Arctic by looking at the following website https://www.polarview.aq/
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