The jury is in: Arctic sea ice has just hit its lowest levels in recorded history. So sayeth the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, and a bunch of Scandinavian research organizations.The Guardian brings the ill tidings:With possibly two weeks’ further melt likely before the ice reaches its minimum extent and starts to refreeze ahead of the winter, satellites showed it had shrunk to 4.1m sq km (1.6m sq miles) on Sunday. The previous record of 4.3m sq km was set in 2007 …
“The previous record, set in 2007, occurred because of near perfect summer weather for melting ice. Apart from one big storm in early August, weather patterns this year were unremarkable. The ice is so thin and weak now, it doesn’t matter how the winds blow,” said the NSIDC director, Mark Serreze. The record is widely seen by scientists at the NSIDC and elsewhere as a strong signal of long-term climate warming.
“The Arctic used to be dominated by multiyear ice, or ice that stayed around for several years,” Meier said. “Now it’s becoming more of a seasonal ice cover and large areas are now prone to melting out in summer,” said Serreze.The NASA video above explains why everybody should give a shit about unprecedented occurrence —and how everyone with an iota of sense is already preparing in advance for the Arctic changes wrought by global warming. And that includes shipping companies and oil companies: these industries may work to sow public doubt that manmade warming is occurring, but they’re nonetheless planning to exploit the great melt to drill for oil and open up more efficient trade routes.It also means that most of us will live to see ice-free Arctic summers, which are now only a matter of decades away.
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