April 5, 2009
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No Ice in the Arctic in OUR Lifetime!
Perhaps now Global Warming should be changed to Global WARNING.
Summer ice measures suggest that the Arctic may lose most of it ice cap within three decades — three times faster than projected — suggest federal scientists. Only coastal Greenland and Canada may then retain ice cover, suggest the study in the April 3 Geophysical Research Letters. “The Arctic is changing faster than anticipated,” says author James Overland of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had projected severe summer ice cap loss in the Arctic by the end of the century. But more recent ice declines, fed into six separate climate projections, suggest that 620,000 square miles of the Arctic will be ice-covered by the end of the summer in 2037, compared to 2.8 million miles today.“Averaged together, the models point to a nearly ice-free Arctic in 32 years, with some of the models putting the event as early as 11 years from now,” says a joint statement of the University of Washington, American Geophysical Union and NOAA.
