Earth Equity News

Measuring the Melting Arctic Sea Ice. By Bruce Dorminey, Miller-McCune/McClatchy Newspapers, July 4, 2010. “While the world’s eyes focus on the catastrophe in the Gulf, climatologists are tracking a decades-old cataclysm at the top of the world -- dwindling Arctic sea ice. This year is projected to surpass 2007’s summer sea ice minimum... ‘Where Arctic ice used to be 3- to 5-meters thick in most places, now it’s tough to find ice that’s over 3-meters thick,’explained Ignatius Rigor, a climatologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. ‘Most of the Arctic is covered by 2-year-old ice. It used to be covered by ice that was 30 years old.’ A decade of warmer than normal Arctic air temperatures, along with warmer ocean waters moving their way north, are thought to be responsible... Projections call for the Arctic Ocean to become open water, at least in summer, as early as 2040... CryoSat-2, a $170 million ice-measuring polar satellite launched by the European Space Agency in April, will devote a large part of its mission to helping climate researchers understand the how and why of Arctic climate change. Specifically, CryoSat will measure the rate at which the thickness of Arctic sea ice changes over time.”