Warming in a global cool period | csmonitor.com

With all the focus on human-triggered global warming, it may be hard to imagine that the world is riding a 50-million-year-long cooling trend.

But it is, and blame the trend on a continental-scale collision, say geophysicists Dennis Kent of Rutgers University and Giovanni Muttoni of the University of Milan in Italy.

2008 Arctic summer COOLER -- Higher-than-average 1st year sea ice survived

Here are some of the main points from the report of why 2008 did not break 2007's record low.......

--Higher-than-average retention of first-year sea ice as more thin ice survived this melt season than is typical.

--The summer of 2008 was cooler than 2007.

--Much of this thin, first-year ice was located at higher latitudes compared to 2007.

--Wind patterns in 2008 as shown below were different from 2007, leading to less compacted ice, which does no melt as quickly compared to compacted ice.