Google has a way of attracting attention, whether it’s by upending cell phone paradigms with an open-source platform or frightening publishers with its quest to digitize every book ever written. Now environmental groups have reason to hope one of the search giant’s projects will raise eco-consciousness among people who spend more time playing with the latest techie fad than they do reading conservationist pamphlets.

The reason is Google Earth, a standalone application that has been much loved by travel enthusiasts and geography buffs for the last few years. The program is a viewer in which satellite photos are augmented with three-dimensional computer renderings of geological formations and man-made buildings. Viewing New York City on Google Earth, for instance, you can not only check out the treescape at Central Park from overhead but tilt toward the horizon and fly by buildings that jut up all around you.

With an update to the software issued this week, though, Google Earth users can glide out over the edge of Manhattan, hover above the Atlantic, and dip below to explore. The project has added huge chunks of data from undersea exploration to its database, and — now that it has worked out a programming limitation that assumed everything worth seeing was above the zero-elevation mark — users can see the wreck of the Titanic, chart debris floating far from land, and observe marine sanctuaries they could never visit in person.

Groups like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are excited about the development, and in fact have actively participated both in providing data and in encouraging Google to make it available.

NOAA and others are hoping that the easy availability of all these images will help land-lubbers connect with, as the group’s Richard Spinrad puts it, “the myriad issues affecting our ocean.” That could happen through the ease with which organizations can connect their own content to a given location’s Google Earth representation (already, National Geographic and BBC World are among the contributors; the National Snow and Ice Data Center uses it to demonstrate climate change’s effect on glaciers), or it might simply develop as users embrace the vicarious pleasures of undersea exploration, using an interface in which computer-generated waves ripple hypnotically above as you sink lower into millennia -old underwater canyons. (See this page for more on using the new features.)

If swimming through virtual water doesn’t create new environmentalists, though, another new Google Earth feature might: A historical viewing option lets users see time-lapse images that dramatize, say, urban sprawl or the impact of a hurricane. Google’s access to old images only goes back so far, of course, but the years to come are likely to offer enough dramatic changes to scare a Google Earther or two into taking climate change seriously.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

The numbers are in from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and declining ice thickness is at a hazardous level; observed to be the second-lowest coverage on record, scientists said this week.

According to the NSIDC, on September 12, 2008, the sea ice extent dropped to 1.74 million square miles (4.52 million square kilometers) — or a little less than half the area of the United States. This appears to have been the lowest point of the year, as sea ice has now begun its annual cycle of growth in response to autumn cooling.

Satellite observations show that the 2008 minimum is the second-lowest recorded since 1979 — the lowest level was recorded in 2007 — and is 2.24 million square kilometers (0.86 million square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average minimum.

The latest news from the NSIDC, which is a part of the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, and NASA, reaffirms the strong negative trend in summertime sea ice observed over the past thirty years.

“Arctic sea ice may well have reached its lowest levels ever in terms of total volume,” the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) noted in a press release.

“If you take reduced ice thickness into account, there is probably less ice overall in the Arctic this year than in any other year since monitoring began,” said Dr. Martin Sommerkorn, senior climate change adviser for WWF’s Arctic Program. “This is also the first year that the Northwest Passage over the top of North America and the Northeast Passage over the top of Russia are both free of ice.”

Sommerkorn says in the statement that the continuing loss of older, thicker ice means that the Arctic ice cover is following a trend of becoming younger and thinner each year. The area of ice that is at least five years old has decreased by 56 percent between 1985 and 2007. The oldest ice types have essentially disappeared. Taken together, the new figures clearly show the Arctic is experiencing the continuation of an accelerated declining trend.

“The Arctic is a key factor in stabilizing the global climate,” Sommerkorn adds.

He explains the imperative existence of Arctic ice: “It’s like a mirror, reflecting the sun’s heat back into space. As that ice goes, Arctic waters absorb more heat, adding to global warming. The local warming of the Arctic will also soon release more greenhouse gases from the Arctic that were previously locked in permanently frozen ground. This means there will be two powerful feedbacks from the Arctic affecting the global environment. This is not just an Arctic problem, it is a global problem, and it demands a global response.”

Governments of the world are reportedly negotiating a new climate agreement to come into force in 2013, but the heat is on for a new international climate agreement to be reached at the U.N. Summit in Copenhagen in December 2009.

For more information see the full NSIDC announcement. See an up close view of 2008 Arctic Sea Ice from the AMSR-E, the instrument on the Aqua satellite here.

The NSIDC will release more detailed information from research gathered at the beginning of October, including a full analysis of the possible causes behind this year’s low ice conditions, particularly interesting aspects of the melt season, the set-up going into the important winter growth season ahead, and graphics comparing this year to the long-term record. At that time, they say, they will know what the monthly average September sea ice extent was in 2008 – the measure scientists most often rely on for accurate analysis and comparison over the long-term.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Satellite pictures of the Arctic suggest that this year’s summer melt likely will be worse than last year’s, providing a dramatic demonstration of how global warming can snowball — no pun intended.

As the ice melts back farther and farther each summer, it loses its ability to reflect heat from the earth, becoming a contributor to, as well as a victim of, global warming. In addition, as the permafrost of the Arctic regions warms, it releases stored carbon, adding to greenhouse gases, and furthering the escalation of warming temperatures, scientists say. All this bad news, unfortunately doesn’t have any quick fixes, but will continue escalating until and unless global warming is stalled or reduced.

According to ongoing monitoring by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), August satellite images show that shrinking polar ice has receded to the second lowest level since satellite recording began, and September will tell if it surpasses the lowest level ever reached, in 2007.

“We will know in the next several weeks, when the melt season comes to a close. The bottom line, however, is that the strong negative trend in summertime ice extent characterizing the past decade continues,” according to the report this past week by the NSIDC.

The main areas of the melt are in the Chukchi Sea off the Alaskan coast and the East Siberian Seas off the coast of eastern Russia.

For more info about sea ice see the FAQ page of the NSIDC, which is based at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media