Arctic ice shrank to the smallest extent ever recorded by satellite as of Sept. 3, with August of 2007 setting the all-time record as the smallest ice cap observed during any month since monitoring began more than three decades ago.
And the melt season has two weeks to go.
“It’s amazing,” NSIDC’s Mark Serreze told the Guardian Unlimited in the UK. “It’s simply fallen off a cliff and we’re still losing ice.”
The latest details on the fastest polar cap meltdown ever can be found at the fall ice season countdown by the National Snow and Ice Data Center. This shrinkage destroys critical habitat used by polar bears, walrus and seals — and will leave Alaska coastal villages like Shishmaref and Kivalina exposed to high surf and erosion come fall storms. It consumes the planet’s air conditioner, transforming reflective white floes into heat-absorbing ocean.
Satellites discerned an ice cap that covered 1.70 million square miles on Memorial Day — about 17 percent smaller than the previous absolute minimum of 2.05 million square miles observed Sept. 21-22, 2005.
The ice loss had slowed in mid August, suggesting that the melt season was winding down. But the decline accelerated during final slide into September. The disappearance of 140,000 square miles over a seven-day period — the ice cap covered about 1.84 million square miles on Aug. 27 — might not sound like much until you make the abstract concrete. So try this:
An frozen habitat almost as large as Montana disintegrated into slush last week. It’s gone.
The unprecedented decline of sea ice during the 2007 summer has startled scientists and dismayed some Alaskans tracking the developments. The Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic Islands was reported to be more open than it had been in decades (See this satellite image posted by NSIDC) and this region is predicted to be one of the last areas to lose thick ice.
Paradoxically, the Northeast Passage north of Siberia — predicted to be the first open shipping route through the Arctic — remained closed due to thick floes jammed against the Taymyr Peninsula.
“Might the Northeast Passage open in the next few weeks? We will be monitoring the situation,” say the ice wizards at NSIDC.
This extraordinary loss could be the harbinger of a fall storm disaster for Shishmaref and Kivalina, where a fetch of open water reaching more than 1,000 miles to the Northwest might take weeks longer to freeze. It could hasten the decline of Beaufort Sea polar bears by delaying the return to solid ice where they find food and build dens. The implications are only just starting to get worked out by scientists.
The latest dispatch from NSIDC was only just starting to hit the media across the world. The Guardian appeared to be first, offering the startling prediction of an ice free Arctic only 23 summers from now. About 40 years ahead of predictions.
The Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer and levels o sea ice in the region now stand at a record low, scientists said last night. Expert said they were “stunned” by the loss of ice, with an area almost twice as big a Britain disappearing in the last week alone. So much ice has melted this summer that the north-west passage across the top of Canada is fully navigable, and observers say the north-east passage along Russia’s Arctic coast could open later this month. If the increase rate of melting continues, the summertime Arctic could be totally free of ice by 2030.
Amid this alarming sea ice slush cup, there was some comic relief.
The Associated Press reported (via KTUU in Anchorage) that Alaska’s senior Sen. Ted Stevens has declared the climate crisis over. The worst is over. The cooling trend is about to reverse.
The Earth, Stevens told reporters, has reached the end of a 700-year warm period and will soon chill.
That theory was a new one, said Deborah Williams, the activist behind Alaska Conservation Solutions, according to the AP.
Want to bet that Williams had something a bit spicier to say?
So in the spirit of Uncle Ted, let’s don’t lose our sense of humor about what has become a sort of Perfect Melt. So we submit the Lower 48 index to Polar Ice Meltdown 2007.
Three weeks ago the loss was a New Mexico.
Last week, it slowed, and the loss was only a Louisiana.
This week, unfortunately, we’re back up there. It’s a Montana.
Might we have a Texas or California by next week? Keep checking NSIDC.
[...] The Polar Slush Cap? [...]