If any explorers had been hiking to the North Pole this
summer, they would have had to swim the last few miles. The
discovery of open water at the Pole by an ice-breaker cruise ship
in mid August surprised many in the scientific community.
This finding, combined with two recent studies, provides not
only more evidence that the Earth's ice cover is melting, but that
it is melting at an accelerating rate. A study by two Norwegian
scientists projects that within 50 years, the Arctic Ocean could be
ice-free during the summer. The other, a study by a team of four
U.S. scientists, reports that the vast Greenland ice sheet is
melting.
The projection that the Arctic Ocean will lose all its summer ice
is not surprising, since an earlier study reported that the
thickness of the ice sheet has been reduced by 42 percent over the
last four decades. The area of the ice sheet has also shrunk by 6
percent. Together this thinning and shrinkage have reduced the
Arctic Ocean ice mass by nearly half.
From Common Dreams
Newscenter
