Herald Sun
The Arctic ice cap keeps melting under the effects of global warming and in August saw its second-largest summer shrinkage since satellite observations began 30 years ago, US scientists said yesterday.
Measurements on August 26 showed a 5.26 million sq km ice cap, just below the 5.32 million sq km observed on September 21, 2005, making it the second-biggest summer Arctic ice-cap melt in history, said the National Snow and Ice Data Centre.
Since the start of August, the Boulder, Colorado, based centre said the Arctic polar cap shrank by 2.06 million sq km.
Melting is so fast and extensive it could shrink the ice cap to below the 4.25 million sq km reached in the summer of 2007, the smallest it had ever been observed by satellites, the centre said.
As the end of the Arctic summer and the start of the freezing autumn is several weeks away, it said, the ice cap could dwindle even more than it did in 2007.
At the end of the northern summer 2007, the Arctic ice cap was 40 per cent smaller than the average 7.23 million sq km observed from 1979-2000, the NSIDC said. The North Pole melting season begins in mid-June.
The cap shrinks to its smallest area by mid-September and grows the most in winter by mid-March.
The North Pole itself could even become free of ice next month for the first time in modern history, setting a new milestone in the effects of global warming on the Arctic ice shelf, NSIDC glaciologist Mark Serreze said in late June.