Recent Sea Ice Survey Draws Attention to Arctic Warming Once Again
03.12.2009 - Water & Oceans, Ice & Snow, Human Dimension, Other, Arctic
Right before the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, a team of explorers and scientists wanted to draw attention to an increasingly warmer Arctic. The team departed on a 450-kilometre trek across the Arctic for 73 days in unfriendly terrain with temperatures of -40°C.
The expedition was an effort to measure how much multi-year sea ice remained and how much of it was new. The team, which was underwritten by the Catlin Group in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), initially expected to find a good proportion of multi-year ice. However the team found that in reality there was none left.
According to University of Cambridge scientist Peter Wadhams, who has been studying the Arctic since 1971, the decline in sea ice is irreversible. "The more you lose, the more open water is created, the more warming goes on in that open water during the summer, the less ice forms in the winter, the more melt there is the following summer. It becomes a breakdown process where everything ends up accelerating until it's all gone."
While the evidence leaves no room for debate, the survey expedition and satellite photos underline the urgency to find a solution in Copenhagen.
