Huge ice loss stuns scientists

Scientists are pointing to the sudden and rapid melting of Arctic ice as a sure sign of man-made global warming.

“It has never occurred before in the past,” said NASA senior research scientist Josefino Comiso in a news conference last week. “It is alarming… This winter ice provides the kind of evidence that it is indeed associated with the greenhouse effect.”

Winter ice, when it melts in summer, provides a breeding ground for plankton, an important part of the Arctic Ocean’s food chain.

“If the winter ice melt continues, the effect would be very profound, especially for marine mammals,” Comiso said.

For more than 25 years, Arctic sea ice has slowly decreased in winter by about 1.5 per cent per decade. But over the past two years the melting has been 10 to 15 times faster.

From 2004 to 2005, the amount of ice dropped 2.3 percent, and, over the past year, it’s declined by another 1.9 per cent.

A second NASA study by other researchers found the winter sea ice in one region of the eastern Arctic has shrunk by 40 percent in just the past two years.

The ice is melting even in cold winter temperatures because the water is warmer, and summer ice covers less area and lasts a shorter time. This means the winter ice season shortens and warmer water melts at the edges of the winter ice more every year.
Scientists are also disturbed by the formation of a large mass of water from melted sea ice in the interior of sea ice north of Alaska.