Earth ID: 3678

28 Year Arctic Summer Seasonal Temperature Trend

Visualizations by Cindy Starr Released on January 5, 2010

The Arctic region has been an area of scientific interest because it is expected that global warming signals will be amplified in the region because of ice-albedo feedback effect. Such effect is associated with the high albedo of snow and sea ice covered areas compared to that of ice free ocean and land areas. This animation depicts the 28-year summer seasonal surface temperature trend over the Arctic region determined from data collected during the months of June, July and August between 1982 and 2009.

In this animation, the warming and cooling regions are revealed in steps of .02 degrees change per year starting with the regions of greatest change and progressing to the areas of least change. Blue hues indicate cooling regions while red hues depict warming. The neutral region of -.01 to +.01 degrees is shown in white. Brighter regions indicate greater temperature change while light regions indicate less. On the left side, the colarbar shows cooling temperatures ranging from -0.42 to zero degrees Kelvin, while the colorbar on the right shows warming temperatures ranging from zero to +0.42 degrees per year. An animated bar beside each colorbar brackets the range of data values being displayed.