Credit: Dirk Notz
Participants in a sea ice measurement campaign including the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, are taking samples of the Arctic sea ice at Spitzbergen. Examining these samples helps them to better understand the factors that influence the development of sea ice. In this way, researchers can improve the models simulating this development. Dirk Notz and Julienne Stroeve have now compared corresponding model calculations with data from satellite measurements, and discovered that the climate models underestimate the loss of Arctic sea ice. The study by the two researchers also makes it possible to calculate the individual contribution to the Arctic's shrinking sea ice.