Climate Regimes of the Arctic - The Arctic Climate System - page 260

Figure 8.5. Surface melt extent (black areas) for the summer of 1999 based on satellite
passive microwave retrievals (adapted from Abdalati and Steffen, 2001, by permission
of AGU).
surface melt during the summer of 1999 (from Abdalati and Steffen, 2001 ), which,
based on data through the end of the twentieth century, could be considered a fairly
representative year. The melt area shows a general association with latitude and ele-
vation - melt occurs in the southern and coastal regions of the ice sheet but not in
the highest and hence coldest parts. For the ice sheet considered as a whole, the area
undergoing surface melt correlates strongly with surface air temperature anomalies.
As introduced in Chapter 2 , There has been a general increase in surface melt area
since the advent of passive microwave records in 1979 (Abdalati and Steffen, 2001 ;