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| Figure 7. The change in age and thickness of sea ice between 1987 and 2005. In 1987, most of the Arctic sea ice was old and thick, generally more than ten years old. A period of strong positive Arctic Oscillation conditions between 1989 and 1995 created winds and currents that flushed most of this old ice out of the Arctic Ocean, through Fram Strait to the east of Greenland. The new ice that replaced the old ice is much thinner. Image credit: Rigor, I. G., and J. M. Wallace (2004), "Variations in the age of Arctic sea-ice and summer sea-ice extent," Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L09401, doi:10.1029/2004GL019492. |
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