Polar Oceans from Space

The book presents a wealth of material about the polar oceans, more specifically the ice-covered areas and peripheral seas. It provides a detailed history of the changing climate of the polar oceans as observed by satellite sensors in the last three decad

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Atmospheric and Oceanographic Sciences Library Volume 41

Editors Lawrence A. Mysak, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanographic Sciences, McGill University, Montreal, Canada Kevin Hamilton, International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, U.S.A. Editorial Advisory Board A. Berger Université Catholique, Louvain, Belgium J.R. Garratt CSIRO, Aspendale, Victoria, Australia J. Hansen MIT, Cambridge, MA, U.S.A. M. Hantel Universität Wien, Austria H. Kelder KNMI (Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute), De Bilt, The Netherlands T.N. Krishnamurti The Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, U.S.A. P. Lemke Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany A. Robock Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, U.S.A. S.H. Schneider Stanford University, CA, U.S.A. G.E. Swaters University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada J.C. Wyngaard Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, U.S.A.

For other titles published in this series, go to www.springer.com/series/5669

Josefino Comiso

Polar Oceans from Space

Josefino Comiso Cryospheric Sciences Branch, Code 614.1 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Greenbelt, MD 20771 USA [email protected]

ISBN 978-0-387-36628-9 e-ISBN 978-0-387-68300-3 DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-68300-3 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2010923171 © 2010 United States Government as represented by the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. No copyright is claimed in the United States under Title 17, U.S. Code. All Other Rights Reserved. Published by Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Cover illustration: Wave@2009 JupiterImages Corporation Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

To my wife Diana who taught me the warmth and joy of living

Preface

Only a few centuries ago, we knew very little about our planet Earth. The Earth was considered flat by many although it was postulated by a few like Aristotle that it is spherical based on observations that included the study of lunar eclipses. Much later, Christopher Columbus successfully sailed to the West to discover the New World and Ferdinand Magellan’s ship circumnavigated the globe to prove once and for all that the Earth is indeed a sphe