A photo from open sources
Lakes of meltwater accelerate the melting of Arctic ice – like lenses, they direct focused sunlight into the ice, “burning” them, says a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Global climate change led to the fact that in recent decades the area of arctic ice is continuously declining. However a more serious problem scientists consider qualitative changes – experts of the National US Snow and Ice Information Center (NSIDC) found that Arctic ice is getting younger: in March 2011 on ice age about one or two years accounted for 80% of the total ice cover, whereas in 1980-2000 this figure was in 55% on average. German scientists from the Institute for Polar Research Alfred Wegener (AWI) led by Marcel Nikolaus (Marcel Nicolaus) discovered one of the reasons why they are destroyed perennial, thick ice fields. It turned out that talniks – permanent lakes of meltwater on the surface of ice fields – act as lenses, conducting heat deep into the ice masses. The authors studies to evaluate the effects of these structural changes ice fields for the first time carried out large-scale measurements of how deep the sun’s rays penetrate the ice. They came to the conclusion that in those places where meltwater accumulates on surface of the ice, it focuses the sun’s rays and directs thermal energy deep into the ice field. As a result, as noted experts, the appearance of talniks sooner or later leads to a split ice floes because the “holey” ice fields absorb heat like sponge.
Arctic Water
