Ice melted to its second-lowest summertime level on record by September 12, 2008.
The annual melting of sea ice around the North Pole didn’t quite match last year’s record retreat, but this summer still produced the second-greatest melt on record.
Mark Serreze, an Arctic expert at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., said the “climate feedbacks” that are kicking in could lead to a complete loss of summertime ice within about two decades.
The ice reached its smallest coverage on Sept. 12, but began to refreeze a few days later when the sun’s radiation became weaker as the Arctic winter began to set in.
Satellite observations have revealed that the sea ice coverage has gotten smaller and smaller each summer since the 1980s.
Last week, researchers announced that a navigable corridor of open water had opened up around the entire Arctic, possibly for the first time in 125,000 years.
Photo: NASA's Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio