Arctic sea ice shrinking at a record rate, says scientist

Randy Boswell , CanWest News Service
Published: Friday, August 10, 2007

Just a day before Prime Minister Stephen Harper was to arrive in the Far North today to try to boost Canada's claims of sovereignty over a melting Arctic, a U.S. climate expert announced that the ice cover in the northern hemisphere has shrunk faster this summer than in any year since reliable satellite imagery of the polar cap became available in 1979.

William Chapman, a University of Illinois researcher whose Cryosphere Today website provides day-to-day pictures of the global sea ice, said Thursday that "today, the northern hemisphere sea ice area broke the record for the lowest recorded ice area."

And he predicted that with "a month or more of melt" left this season, "it is therefore almost certain that the previous 2005 record will be annihilated," when the minimum ice cover is reached in September.
Noting that previous low-ice years could be attributed largely to faster melting in specific regions of the Arctic, such as the Beaufort or Bering seas, Chapman's website stated that "the character of 2007's sea ice melt is unique in that it is dramatic and covers the entire Arctic sector. Atlantic, Pacific and even the central Arctic sectors are showing large negative sea ice area anomalies."

In a story about Chapman's findings published late Thursday by the New York Times, NASA scientists and other ice experts confirmed that the Arctic is experiencing a record-setting melt this summer and pointed to a combination of natural fluctuations and persistent long-term polar warming due to global climate change.

"The melting rate during June and July this year was simply incredible," Chapman told the Times. "And then you've got this exposed black ocean soaking up sunlight and you wonder what, if anything, could cause it to reverse course."

� The Calgary Herald 2007