ENVIRONMENT: Earth’s Arctic Freezer
Turning Into Hothouse
UXBRIDGE, Apr 10 (IPS) – The world is losing its northern freezer as Arctic
winter ice is in sharp decline, NASA scientists reported this week.
Even with
below average winter temperatures, Arctic...
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ENVIRONMENT: Earth’s Arctic Freezer
Turning Into Hothouse
UXBRIDGE, Apr 10 (IPS) – The world is losing its northern freezer as Arctic
winter ice is in sharp decline, NASA scientists reported this week.
Even with
below average winter temperatures, Arctic ice is thinner and covers less area than
it did a decade ago.
Arctic sea ice is the cooling mechanism for the global climate system.
As it
declines and the region warms – already three to five degrees Celsius warmer –
then inevitably there are local, regional and hemispheric climate impacts.
“We’ve already lost one third of the summer ice cover since the 1980s.
There are
already impacts from this,” says Ron Kwok of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena.
“A completely ice-free summer by 2013 is not impossible,” Kwok said in a
telephone news conference.
“You would have been laughed out the room if you
suggested this five years ago.
”
The new study shows that the maximum extent of the 2008-2009 winter sea ice
cover was the fi
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