‘Devastating’: Arctic sea ice is second lowest on record
- US scientists offer further stark evidence of the impact of global warming
- ‘We are headed towards a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean’
Warming in the Arctic shrank the ice covering the polar ocean this year to its second-lowest extent in four decades, scientists announced, yet another sign of how climate change is rapidly transforming the region.
Satellites recorded this year’s sea ice minimum at 3.74 million sq km (1.4 million square miles) on September 15, only the second time the ice has been measured below 4 million sq km in 40 years of record keeping, said researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).
“The year 2020 will stand as an exclamation point on the downward trend in Arctic sea ice extent,” said Mark Serreze, director of the NSIDC. “We are headed towards a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean, and this year is another nail in the coffin.”
September marks the end of the summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and thus is usually the time Arctic ice is at its annual low
“It’s fairly devastating that we’ve had such consistently low sea ice. But unfortunately, it’s not surprising,” said Twila Moon, a glaciologist at the research centre in Boulder, Colorado.
