U.S. military trims access to its critical sea ice measurements
By Paul Voosen, Science.
Excerpt: For nearly 4 decades, researchers have tracked one of the most prominent harbingers of global warming—dwindling Arctic sea ice—with data from aging weather satellites run by the U.S. military. But this continuous record is now at risk, after the Department of Defense (DOD) quietly told climate scientists it would be “deprioritizing” access to the data. The move comes as Arctic sea ice approaches a possible new record low. “The [satellites] are up there and functioning,” says Walt Meier, a remote-sensing scientist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). “But we’re not getting all the data anymore, at least regularly.” NSIDC and Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service compile the two most prominent global records of sea ice, and both groups rely on these data. The only options for similar observations come from either an aging Japanese satellite, launched in 2012, or a series of Chinese weather satellites, which the country is already using to produce its own record of sea ice. ...NSIDC announced on Wednesday it would begin to use data from the Japanese sensor, noting that the transition would take time. That means sea ice monitoring in the United States, at least for now, will be reliant on a single source, says Rick Thoman, a climate scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “Any kind of single point of failure is a real risk,”....