Wired (August 30)
“A major driver of Antarctica’s cascading crises is the loss of floating sea ice, which forms during winter.” Since 2014, “the coverage of sea ice has fallen not just precipitously, but almost unbelievably, contracting by 75 miles closer to the coast.” Over the past decade, winter sea ice “has declined 4.4 times faster around Antarctica than it has in the Arctic…. Put another way: The loss of winter sea ice in Antarctica over just the past decade is similar to what the Arctic has lost over the last 46 years.”
Tags: 2014, 46 years, 75 miles, Antarctica, Arctic, Cascading, Coast, Contracting, Coverage, Crises, Decade, Driver, Loss, Precipitously, Sea ice, Winter
Wall Street Journal (July 31)
“Once a lonely and largely impassable maritime expanse where countries worked together to extract natural resources, the Arctic is increasingly contested territory. As sea ice melts and traffic increases on the southern edges of the Arctic Ocean, governments are maneuvering in ways that mirror great-power rivalries in lower latitudes.”
Tags: Arctic, Contested, Governments, Great-power rivalries, Impassable, Lonely, Maneuvering, Maritime expanse, Melts, Natural resources, Sea ice, Traffic
LA Times (October 6)
“The Arctic is transforming more rapidly than anywhere else on Earth, with temperatures rising at twice the rate seen elsewhere.… Nobody can be certain when the Arctic sea ice will be gone, but scientists agree that we are on a precarious downward spiral. The loss of nearly all Arctic sea ice in late summer seems inevitable, and an ice-free Arctic Ocean will probably arrive within decades, if not sooner.”
Tags: Arctic, Downward spiral, Earth, Ice-free, Inevitable, Sea ice, Summer, Temperatures
The Guardian (September 17)
“Sometimes, the future arrives with alarming speed.” In 2000, scientists warned urgent action was needed; otherwise summer sea ice would disappear from the Arctic Ocean by 2050. The actual results have been “far more dramatic….The summer Arctic could be an open sea within a decade.”
Tags: Arctic Ocean, Climate change, Sea ice, Summer
Washington Post (August 27)
“The extent of Arctic sea ice has reached a record low, a historic retreat that scientists said is a stark signal of how climate change is transforming the global landscape.” Typically the summer low comes in mid-September so the ice cover may continue to shrink beyond its current size of 1.58 million square miles. This year, “the ice melted at an unprecedented 38,600 square miles per day during the first part of August.”
Tags: Arctic, Climate change, Record low, Sea ice
