A primary source is a document or paper that is written during or after a time of study and research. It is a source that offers an inside view of a particular event or study. The central role of diminishing sea ice in recent Arctic temperature amplification is a primary source article written by James A. Screen which reveals that the rapid melting of ice in the arctic has severely increased warming in the area over the past couple decades. This paper goes into detail explaining and proving how he got to this conclusion. A secondary source is an article or blog which interprets and analyzes a primary source. The ideas of a secondary article are the same as the primary but they are often presented in a different way to catch the targeted audiences attention. Some information may be left out, slightly changed, or exaggerated so more interest is generated. The secondary source is an article from Science Daily which reports Screen's findings and summarizes them into the form of a website article. Although both sources are displaying and discussing the same ideas they differ greatly from one another in many ways. These differences let us tell apart a primary source from a secondary source.
In the secondary article Melting Sea Ice Major Cause of Warming in Arctic, New study reveals it overviews Screen's findings by summarizing the main points and displaying them in a way that the general public can read and gather the information fairly easily. It tells us that ice acts as a shiny lid on the ocean that reflects incoming sunlight back into space but when the ice melts the heat is absorbed by the water. The water then heats the atmosphere above it (Science Daily). This secondary source doesn't seem to alter any of the ideas,facts, or details of the primary source but it certainly does seems to lack in amount of information presented. They don't exaggerate any points made by Screen but they definitely simplify his article enough so that the average reader can draw the important scientific material from it with ease.
In Screen's article he thoroughly explains how the increase in temperature in the arctic is directly caused by sea ice diminishing. He discusses how during summer, the atmosphere loses heat to the ocean and in the winter that process reversed. Therefore in the summer the reduced sea ice allows for greater warming of the upper ocean which further enhances loss of sea ice. The excess heat stored in the water is then released into the atmosphere during the winter. The delayed refreezing of ice and the warmer upper ocean contributes to the greater transfer of heat into the atmosphere ( Screen 2010). This 5 page primary source is a much more informative article than the one page article produced by Science Daily. It explains and discusses much more information about the subject that the secondary source failed to. For example, the secondary source simply describes that ice diminishing is causing warming in the arctic, whereas the primary source explains this including what regions it is mostly effecting and during what seasons of the year ice reductions are causing warming.
I discovered many differences between the primary and secondary sources with the main one being the huge difference in amount and quality of information. Science Daily is essentially just summarizing Screen's article to get the main point across to the public, it is short and fairly easy to read. It simply tells us about the findings from his research and somewhat how he did his research. James A. Screen's article gives us all the information on his study and fully describes how he did his research and how he came to his conclusion. In his article he takes into consideration other factors that are also said to have possibly caused the arctic amplification (atmospheric/ocean circulation, cloud cover, water vapour) and explains why or why not they are valid. His article contains trends and data sets which were made into graphs,charts, and maps to help display the information. He uses and references other scientific research work throughout his article adding to the overall quality and legitimacy of the paper. In the primary article his discovery isnt just stated to you, it is proved through his trends and data sets . Another difference i realized was the level of vocabulary between the two articles. In the secondary source it is limited to simple enough words that the general public will understand, whereas the primary source uses much more complex vocabulary. An example of this can even be seen in the two titles of the articles, the secondary source uses Melting Sea Ice...whereas the primary source says Diminished Sea Ice.
In Conclusion, both articles explain how melting sea ice is causing increased warming in the Arctic. I discovered that the primary and secondary articles greatly differentiate between each other despite presenting the same point. I believe the primary article explains this point in much more detail than the secondary article does. But I also believe that each article has its own role and purpose. Both articles differ because of the different guidelines and audiences which define the article for what it is presumed to be. You can find the primary source here http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7293/full/nature09051.html and the secondary source here http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100428142324.htm
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