Warming may explain increase in Antarctic sea ice

Nature : Despite global temperature increases and a trend of significant sea-ice loss at the North Pole, the South Pole has seen growth in sea ice. Richard Bintanja of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute in Utrecht and his colleagues believe they have found one of the major factors explaining the growth. They examined satellite and buoy data of ocean temperatures and salinity between 1985 and 2010. Using those data, they created a model that incorporated the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet. They determined that the approximately 250 gigatons of ice sheet melting creates a cold layer of water that insulates the sea ice from the warmer waters below. However, the model depicts ice-sheet melting as uniform, and doesn’t account for variations in rates of sea-ice growth. Other factors, such as regional wind patterns, have been shown to also play a role in Antarctic sea-ice growth.