the polar ice caps have been shrinking
in summer and expanding in winter for
millions of years but in the last three
decades the Arctic sea ice at the end of
each summers melt has been getting
steadily smaller the decline was already
alarming but in 2007 when the sea ice
melts shattered the previous record by
almost twenty-five percent researchers
at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
wondered is this an anomaly or part of
an even more alarming trend we have had
low ice cover since 1998 in the Arctic
and what that means is that you have
more open water in the region and with
more open water you're getting more
solar energy into the system so the
Arctic Ocean has actually been warming
up as the ice melts less light energy is
reflected back into space and more of
the sun's energy is absorbed into the
ocean which fuels further melting in
march two thousand eight the ice cap
rebounded to a near normal winter level
but much of this ice was thin single
year ice and after a record rate of
melting in the month of August the ice
shrank to its second smallest extent on
record if it keeps on going then the
potential is that you lose the perennial
ice altogether then we'll have a blue
ocean in the Arctic now if the ocean
becomes low there will be a lot of
environmental impacts there are a lot of
ecological impacts chemie so says the 30
years of satellite data we have on
Arctic sea ice suggests that it's not
likely to recover as a scientist he is
intrigued by the trends but personally
he worries about the planets future well
it makes me feel sad
a lot of things can happen in terms of
the impacts to the environment impacts
to the ecosystem not just in the Arctic
but for the whole whole earth and the
ocean is such a big part of the climate
system and you / curve it a little bit
and you're going to chance the climate
of the world one result of such global
climate change has already begun to
emerge at the other end of the earth
summer sea ice minima in the southern
hemisphere have not been declining as
warmer ocean water promotes evaporation
which creates more snow to feed the
Antarctic ice fields NASA scientists are
using a suite of satellites to study sea
ice at both poles trying to better
understand how a complex set of
phenomena such as cloud cover
reflectivity a thickness of the ice
weather patterns like La Nina and El
Nino and ocean temperature affect the
trends we see today
you