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28 Aug 2012: Arctic Ice Reaches Record Low

The extent of ice covering the Arctic Ocean has reached a new record low and will likely continue to retreat until mid-September, when re-freezing begins to occur, according to satellite observations. NASA and the U.S.-funded National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported that sea ice extent fell in the past few days to 1.58 million square miles (4.1 million square kilometers), breaking by 27,000 square miles the previous record low extent, set in September 2007. Summer sea ice extent has declined by more than 40 percent since satellites began tracking it in 1979, and sea ice now covers less than 30 percent of the Arctic Ocean. Sea ice experts say that both the extent and thickness of Arctic summer sea ice has declined so precipitously in the face of rapidly rising temperatures that the Arctic basin appears to be heading for largely ice-free summers within a decade or two. “Parts of the Arctic have become like a giant slushy,” said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the NSIDC. The disappearing sea ice is creating ever-larger areas of dark, heat-absorbing waters, which is further increasing temperatures in the Arctic and hastening the melting of Greenland’s massive ice sheets.

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