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Wednesday February 24 2016 9 Buffalo Express AIR Toll-free 1 800 465-3168 salesbuffaloairexpress.com www.buffaloairexpress.com Yellowknife - 867 765-6002 Hay River - 867 874-3307 Edmonton - 780 455-9283 WE SERVICE ALL POINTS IN THE NWT that are accessible by commercial aircraft. Ask about our TRUCK AIR EXPRESS RATESTruck Air Express trucks from Edmonton and Calgary and flies out of Yellowknife. WESCLEAN NORTHERN SALES WESCLEAN NORTHERN SALES is the NWTs first choice for Janitorial and Industrial Supplies Flooring Paint and Wallcoverings Premium Wood Pellet Sales and Door to Door Truck Courier Service WESCLEAN 15 Industrial Drive Hay River NT Tel 875-5100 Fax 875-5115 www.wescleannwt.com Flooring Area Rugs Paint Window Coverings Janitorial Supplies W ESCLEA N N.W.T. HURRY IN Sale ends Nov. 27 Flooring Area Rugs Paint Window Coverings Janitorial Supplies interior design headquarters By CRAIG GILBERT A wacky winter over the Arctic Ocean has led to a serious shrinking of its ice stock. Arctic sea ice levels were recorded at their lowest level for any January on re- cord last month according to the Colorado- based scientists tasked with monitoring it. Its not really unexpected were losing the sea ice in all months Mark Serreze director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado. You dont expect every year to see a new re- cord low thats just not going to happen because there is a lot of variability in that system variability you see around the planet. However it really did stick out I would say what we saw this past January because it was kind of a culmination of a whole lot of crazy things happening over the Arctic Ocean. Arctic sea ice extent during January av- eraged 13.53 million square-kilometres which is 1.04 million sq-km below the 1981 to 2010 average according to the centers data. This was 90000 sq-km below the previous record January low that occurred in 2011 and was driven by unusually low ice coverage in the Barents Sea Kara Sea and the East Greenland Sea on the Atlantic side and below average conditions in the Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk. Ice conditions were near average in Baf- fin Bay the Labrador Sea and Hudson Bay. There was also less ice than usual in the Gulf of St. Lawrence an important habitat for harp seals. Sea ice levels were below average in Antarctica last month as well contrasting the record high extent recorded in January 2015. Data show February is well on its way to setting a record of its own with ice extent trending below 2012 the current record low for that month. Technically speaking it was caused by unusually high air temperatures over the Arctic Ocean and a strong negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation AO an atmo- spheric circulation pattern in which the atmospheric pressure over the polar re- gions varies in opposition with that over middle latitudes for the first three weeks of the month. That led to low atmospheric pressure over the North Atlantic and to air temperatures as much as five degrees Celsius above normal over the Arctic be- fore the AO returned to normal in the last week of January. Data from NASA indicated that after 2015 the warmest year for the globe ever January saw the largest departure from average of any month on record. The heat though was disproportionately distrib- uted in the North pushing temperatures four degrees Celsius above the 1951-1980 average for the region. The director of the National Weather Service in Alaska told the Washington Post last week that state is experiencing its third-warmest winter since 1925. Much of the focus by climate scientists this winter has been on the strong El Nio. In the Arctic however the AO is a bigger player and its influence often spills out into the mid-latitudes during winter by allowing cold air outbreaks according to the center. How the AO and El Nio may be linked remains an active area of research. It was absurdly warm over the Arctic Ocean in January Serreze said. Id never seen something like that where it was so warm across all of the Arctic Ocean and Ive been doing Arctic research since the 1980s. Youre seeing that warmth in other areas too like Fairbanks Alaska which is way above normal temperatures this winter for example. Even in the early part of the winter really weird things were happening. He referred to a massive storm that took place near the end of last year between Christmas and New Years that pushed temperatures in the polar region close to the freezing point if not slightly above. The Atlantic magazine dubbed it the the storm that will unfreeze the North Pole. The storm was associated with the AO which pumped warm moisture-rich air way up into the Arctic. There are drifting buoys up there used for research and some of them showed that you got right up to the freezing point and here we are at the end of December at the North Pole he said. That reading would be close to 50 degrees Fahrenheit above normal for that time of year. Now has that ever happened before Maybe it did I dont know. Our ability to measure or ob- serve these things is certainly better than it used to be but it was an eye-opener. He said about a week earlier there was another pretty unprecedented storm off Svalbard an archipelago 800 km north of the Norwegian mainland at about 80 de- grees north latitude that caused a lot of havoc of its own including triggering an avalanche that killed one and sent nine others to hospital. So the record low sea ice is just a part of this fascinating story of whats been hap- pening in the Arctic this winter Serreze said. The Arctic alarm bells have been ringing for quite a while now. Some choose to ignore them but we see this inexora- ble change in the Arctic environment. Its nothing like it was 30 years ago up there in many respects. He recalled doing graduate research just south of Alert on northeast Ellesmere Is- land in 1982 studying the St. Patrick Bay ice caps a pair of caps near Discovery Harbour. We looked on the satellite data a while ago and theyve almost disappeared he said. Air photos of these things were taken in 1959 and compared to that year maybe 15 per cent of them is left. Thats one of those things that really bring it home for me. Those were my little ice caps I stud- ied them to death I knew every nook and cranny and now theyre going to be gone in a decade or two. Thats symptomatic of what were seeing up there. You cant deny what is happening. January sets record lows for Arctic ice levels ENVIRONMENT ICE LEVELS PhotocourtesyofNASAGoddardSpaceFlightCenter Scientists recorded the lowest extent of Arctic sea ice for any January on record last month. A whole lot of crazy things have combined to create weather conditions that are making even veteran researchers scratch their heads in disbelief.