Plan B Forum

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Arctic ice cap on course for record melt
Wednesday, 22 August 2012

by Shaun Tandon
Agençe France-Presse
Arctic ice cap

Scientists collecting water samples on the Arctic ice cap, which is expected to shrink to its smallest-ever level in the coming weeks.

Credit: Kathryn Hansen / NASA

WASHINGTON: The Arctic ice cap is melting at a startlingly rapid rate and may shrink to its smallest-ever level within weeks as the planet's temperatures rise, U.S. scientists said.

Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder said the summer ice in the Arctic was already nearing its lowest level recorded, even though the summer melt season is not yet over.

"The numbers are coming in and we are looking at them with a sense of amazement," said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre at the university.

“We’re likely to set a new record”

"If the melt were to just suddenly stop today, we would be at the third lowest in the satellite record. We've still got another two weeks of melt to go, so I think we're very likely to set a new record," he said.

The previous record was set in 2007 when the Arctic ice cap shrunk to 4.25 million square kilometres (1.64 million square miles), stunning scientists who had not forecast such a drastic melt so soon.

The Colorado-based centre said that one potential factor could be an Arctic cyclone earlier this month. However, Serreze played down the effects of the cyclone and said that this year's melt was all the more remarkable because of the lack of special weather factors seen in 2007.
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