re: #40 ckb

Barrow Sea Ice Break-up in the News

Annual break-up of landfast sea ice off the coast of Barrow, Alaska received international media attention in July 2009 after the USGS made available high resolution-satellite imagery that show inter-annual variability in coastal ice conditions. We would like to emphasize that the images released are scientifically extremely valuable. They both clearly demonstrate the year-to-year variability of ice conditions and document the progress of summer ice break-up in Barrow 2006 in unprecedented detail. However, unlike suggested by some, comparing summer ice conditions in July 2006 and July 2007 is not sufficient evidence to verify a trend.