The Arctic ice cap is likely to vanish by the middle of this century.
In a frightening report issued by The US National Snow and Ice Data Centre, the Arctic Ice will vanish from the earth by the middle of this century. The polar caps are experiencing extreme melting due to global warming and a phenomenon known as “Polar Amplification”
Unless we see a radical decrease in global temperatures the ice caps will melt completely. The last known ice cap meltdown is said to happened over 130,000 years ago.
ARCTIC ice has shrunk to the lowest level ever recorded, according to satellite data from the past week that shows a massive melt is still under way.
The ice cap had contracted to just over 4 million square kilometres, about 77,000 square kilometres smaller than the previous record low in 2007, data from the International Arctic Research Centre and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency indicates. With two to three weeks of warm temperatures to come, the area covered by ice may fall further, to below 4 million sq km.
It means that, unless the Pole grows dramatically cooler, the Arctic ice cap is very likely to vanish entirely during summer by the middle of this century.
”This is significant, because the trend is strongly down and it is consistent with the polar amplification effect,” said the executive director of the Australian National University’s Climate Change Institute, Will Steffen.
Read more: Brisbane Times
In Further Reading The NSIDC says that the meltdown could be due to mechanical breakdown of the ice.
The NSIDC also notes that a spike in the pace of sea ice shrinkage for a few days in early August – to “nearly 200,000 square km per day” from “just over 100,000 square km per day” in recent months – coincided with a major storm in the Arctic Sea.
“This could be due to mechanical break up of the ice and increased melting by strong winds and wave action during the storm. However, it may be simply a coincidence of timing, given that the low-concentration ice in the region was already poised to rapidly melt out,” it said.
Danilov agreed that a shift in atmospheric circulation patterns was a factor in the declining sea ice extent.
Read more: Eurasia Review
Location of the Arctic Ice
