‘We’ve always known that the Arctic is going to be the early warning system for climate change.
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In the Arctic, the sea ice suffered record low winter cover last winter and is now experiencing another summer of ice melting far greater than the predicted long-term average. In the winter, levels were among their lowest ever for the cold season, but then there were more storms than usual over the Arctic during the summer. The refreezing process has now begun, the data center said.
However, Arctic weather during the summer was more friendly to ice – cloudiness, for instance, can cool down the ocean – and as a result, this year’s September extent wasn’t quite so low as in 2012.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado said the sea ice reached its summer low point on Saturday, extending 4.14 million square kilometres.
That’s behind only the mark set in 2012, 1.31 million square miles (3.39 million square kilometers).
And the vast Greenland ice sheet – which covers most of Greenland, stretching over an area three times the size of Texas – is shrinking in the face of rising temperatures.
The center stresses that its determination about 2016’s sea ice minimum is merely “preliminary”.
When the ice melts, the polar bears come ashore and survive on stored fat until it refreezes. “Historically, such weather conditions slow down the summer ice loss, but we still got down to essentially a tie for second lowest in the satellite record”, Serreze said in a statement.
The drive comes as the world is on track for another record breaking hot year.
But sea ice doesn’t necessarily follow in flawless lockstep.
Thus, the punchline is clear: Don’t focus too much on any individual year; focus instead on the trend.
Sea ice affects Arctic communities and wildlife such as polar bears and walruses and also helps regulate the planet’s temperature by influencing the circulation of the atmosphere and ocean. As sea ice trends lower and lower, we can only expect such incursions to grow.
The event was captured in a series of impactful short films created to raise awareness that the amount of ice breaking away from the Arctic has reached historic new levels. “By 2025, vessel traffic through the Bering Strait is projected to increase anywhere from 100 – 500% from what it was in 2013”.
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Serreze said he wouldn’t be surprised if the Arctic was essentially ice free in the summer by 2030, something that will affect worldwide security.
