Arctic sea ice getting thinner, more worrisome

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:27:27 -0700

Thicker, older ice floating on the Arctic Ocean is not replenishing like it used to.

More recent, thinner seasonal ice now makes up about 70 per cent of the ice in winter — up from 50 per cent in the 1980s and 1990s.

"What we're finding is that the ice is now thinner than ever," said Thomas Wagner with the Cryospheric Sciences Program at NASA in Washington, D.C.

"It's receding a lot in the summer. And then, when it begins to grow back in the winter, it's not growing back to the size it once was."

Arctic ice is important for constraining the planet's heat, said Wagner. The ice works like an air conditioner for the world, naturally cooling air and water. It also acts like a mirror, reflecting solar radiation back into space.

"As that ice melts, it's replaced with darker sea water that absorbs a lot more light and begins to heat up."
He said Arctic ice measured about 15 million square kilometres at the end of February — down about 287,000 square kilometres from the winter average and a decline that's roughly the size of Texas.

Meier said the suggestion of an ice-free Arctic in the summer was laughable a few years ago, but some studies have predicted that scenario could happen within the next five to 30 years.

"That seems fairly unlikely, but it's not totally out of the realm of possibility," he said.

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Arctic sea ice getting thinner, more worrisome