Whither Arctic Sea Ice?

This image, produced in Image J, shows the thresholded sea ice extents.

In this chapter, users take the role of students from a small town in Colorado. They team up with students from the town of Churchill, Canada to explore changing sea ice conditions in the Arctic. Together they examine an animation that shows 30 years of satellite images to see how the extent of sea ice in the Arctic has diminished over time. The chapter storyline is built around the real-life case study of Dr. Walt Meier, a Sea Ice Scientist from Boulder, Colorado.

In the fictional story, the students of Churchill become concerned about wildlife in their region because polar bears have become a nuisance in the town. According to the local elders, the sea ice patterns have changed. The students turn to Dr. Meier for his expertise in sea ice analysis. Dr. Meier instructs the students in the use of ImageJ to measure sea ice extents near Churchill from remotely sensed images taken every November. Students import their measurements into Excel and build a graph that documents the changing sea ice conditions. Looking for potential causes of the changes they see, the students turn to the NCEP temperature reanalysis website to download and graph temperature data for the same time period.

Using Churchill's situation as a jumping off point, students can employ their new image processing and analysis skills to research the changing sea ice extents in other regions of the Arctic. As a final activity, in a mock international convention, each student team presents one region's sea ice trends to the rest of the class.