22 October 2015, Carbon Brief, Five charts that show how Arctic and Antarctic sea ice is faring in 2015. At this time of year, there are big differences in what’s going on with sea ice at either end of the world. September saw the Arctic hit its fourth lowest summer minimum on record, while over in Antarctica, the winter maximum finished just above average, ending a streak of record highs in the last three years. Carbon Brief takes a look at what’s happened this year and how it fits in with long term trends. Summer minimum Scientists have been using satellites to measure sea ice extent at the north and south poles since the late 1970s. They take measurements daily, and record the annual minimum and maximum as an indicator of how the poles are changing. In the Arctic, the end of the summer marks the point when sea ice is at its smallest extent, before it freezes up again as temperatures fall. Scientists keep a close eye around the time the low is normally reached – usually mid september – then look for signs of ice accumulating again in order to pinpoint exactly when the summer minimum is reached. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in the US, the summer low occurred this year on 11 September. But because sea ice can throw in a late dip or surge, the NSIDC waited until 6 October before finally confirming this summer’s minimum of 4.41m square kilometers (sq km) – the fourth lowest on record. So how did the rest of the season shape up before this point? Read More here
22 October 2015, The Guardian. Perth’s double whammy: as sea levels rise the city itself is sinking. The city’s growing population means a growing demand for water, but as more and more water is drawn out of Perth’s acquifers, the land is slowly subsiding. Growing demand for water in Perth has caused the city to sink at up to 6mm a year and could be responsible for an apparent acceleration in the rate of sea level rise, according to new research released by Curtin University. The study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in October, found that the rate of subsidence in Perth increased between 2000 and 2005, at the same time as the Water Corporation of WA increased the amount of water it was drawing from the city’s two main aquifers to meet the demands of a growing population. Will Featherstone, professor of geodesy at Curtin and the lead author of the study, described the effect as “like slowly letting the air out of a balloon”. “If you take the water out of the ground, the overburden of all the rocks above pushes down,” he told Guardian Australia. The city appears to be sinking at a rate of between 2mm and 6mm a year, variable throughout the Perth basin. The greatest change was measured at the seaside suburb of Hillarys, which has a GPS sensor to measure the rate of subsidence and a tidal marker operating side by side. Data for much of the Perth basin is patchy. A sinking city also has ramifications for the measurement of sea levels. A few years ago the rate of sea level rise in Western Australia was reported – not entirely accurately, it turned out – to be three times greater than the global average. Read More here