Ice cap melting fast

2009-08-10 08:06

Tuktoyaktuk - The Arctic Ocean has given up tens of thousands more square kilometres of ice in a relentless summer of melt, with scientists watching through satellite eyes for a possible record low polar ice cap.

From the barren Arctic shore of this village in Canada's far northwest, about 2 414km north of Seattle, veteran observer Eddie Gruben has seen the summer ice retreating more each decade as the world has warmed. By this weekend the ice edge lay about 128km at sea.

"Forty years ago, it was 64km out," said Gruben, 89, patriarch of a local contracting business.

Global average temperatures rose 0.6ºC in the past century, but Arctic temperatures rose twice as much or even faster, almost certainly in good part because of manmade greenhouse gases, researchers say.

Dwindled

In late July the mercury soared to almost 30ºC in this settlement of 900 Inuvialuit, the name for western Arctic Eskimos.

"The water was really warm," Gruben said. "The kids were swimming in the ocean."

As of Thursday, the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre reported, the polar ice cap extended over 6.75km² after having shrunk an average 106 000 million km² a day in July - equivalent to one Indiana or three Belgiums daily.

The rate of melt was similar to that of July 2007, the year when the ice cap dwindled to a record low minimum extent of 4.3 million km² in September.

In its latest analysis, the Colorado-based NSIDC said Arctic atmospheric conditions this summer have been similar to those of the summer of 2007, including a high-pressure ridge that produced clear skies and strong melt in the Beaufort Sea, the arm of the Arctic Ocean off northern Alaska and northwestern Canada.

- AP