What Is Happening??

It was a very unusual winter. Areas expecting the usual, often heavy amounts of snowfall received very little and at unusual times this past winter. Other areas, especially parts of Europe received an heavy over-abundance of snow, and unexpected unusually extreme cold temperatures. “Climate Change” explains some, while others just say “Cyclical conditions. Just wait.”A new study by NASA scientist Joey Comiso has found that the oldest and thickest Arctic sea ice is disappearing at a faster rate than the younger and thinner ice at the edges of the ice cap. The rapid disappearance of "older ice" makes the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice cap more vulnerable to further decline.

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Microwave sensors on NASA’s Nimbus-7 satellite and by the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program have photographed images of the polar ice. These two images are of 1980 and another of 2011. These photos show ice coverage throughout the last thirty years. Multi-year ice is shown in bright white, while average sea ice cover is shown in light blue to milky white. The images show a marked reduction in the ice-cover. According to the latest study by NASA scientist Comiso “The Arctic sea ice cover is getting thinner, because it’s rapidly losing its thick component. At the same time, the surface temperature in the Arctic is going up, which results in a shorter ice-forming season”.

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Norwegians are losing artifacts to this “climate change”.

Ice layers once covering Norwegian mountain summits are melting so fast, archaeologists cannot keep pace with the newly exposed land, and are rushing to preserve the number of emerging discoveries. Earlier, ice glaciers covered the mountain...... But conditions are changing! The front edge of Jotunheimen’s Jovfonna ice sheet has retreated about 18 meters, uncovering objects from the Dark and Viking Ages dating as far back as 1,500 years. Early inhabitants used various hunting techniques that are coming to light. Danish scientist Lars Pilø and his team of archaeologists work to recover and preserve reindeer hunting equipment used by the Vikings’ ancestors. Shown are "hunting sticks" used by groups of hunters to scare and herd reindeer in their hunts. Ice layers once covering Norwegian mountain summits are melting so fast, archaeologists cannot keep pace with the newly exposed land, and rush to preserve the number of emerging discoveries. The team has found hunting sticks, bows, arrows and even this 3.400-year-old leather shoe left by the mythological Norse “Ice Giants.” in the Jotunheimen Mountains since 2006 alone.Recently, the archeologists have uncovered no less than 600 important preserved hunting artifacts. "It's like a time machine...the ice has not been this small for many, many centuries," Pilø told Reuters News.

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The melting ice is uncovering the artifacts, but the air causes them to disintegrate. If not retrieved and kept in refrigeration/ice for study, they will be lost, and archaeolgists race against time.It is the opinion of many weather-scientists that rapidly shrinking Arctic sea ice could be behind the recent unusually cold and snowy winters in the Northern Hemisphere. Studies continue. David Rind, a climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City predicts that as the climate continues to warm, unusual weather phenomena will become more common. The challenge, Rind said, will be determining whether these anomalies are part of global warming or natural variability.

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Perhaps our "unusual weather" might become the norm? Stay tuned..