Updated: 25/11/2024
Ice cover in the Arctic fell last month to it’s lowest recorded level for May – more than 580,000 square kilometres below the previous record, set in 2004.
According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSDIC), Arctic sea ice was also a full million square kilometres less than in May 2012 – the year that, in September, recorded the lowest-ever summer extent.
The record low follows a series of record temperatures globally that have occurred in 2016. The warmest February and March since global records were first kept was followed by the warmest-ever April.
Not only was April the warmest on record, it was the twelfth consecutive month in which all temperature records for that month had been broken, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Another record minimum in summer sea ice extent this year?
Polar scientists are not surprised. Chris Rapley, professor of climate science at University College London and a former director of the British Antarctic Survey, says:
“Temperatures in the Arctic over the last winter have been running as much as 10C above the 1981-2010 average, and are still 2-3C higher. For a short period in December, sea ice at the North Pole was at or close to melting, with temperatures at least 20C above normal.
“Not surprisingly, the Arctic ice and snow cover are responding with record low extents. The current rate of sea ice loss, and the reduced thickness of large areas of the ice remaining, suggests that we may see yet another record minimum in summer sea ice extent this year.”
The loss of sea ice will have knock-on effects for Arctic creatures, such as polar bears, which cross onto the sea ice to hunt for their favoured prey, seals. But Professor Rapley warns that the change is also a problem for humans:
“The impacts on the Arctic ocean and land systems are transformational, creating huge problems for the circum-Arctic peoples who, on the basis of their traditional knowledge, confirm that the high latitude climate system has already shifted well outside the bounds they have previously experienced.
“The situation is important for us, as the reduced temperature gradient between the equator and the North Pole is changing the circulation patterns and behaviours of the atmosphere and oceans, contributing to our direct experience of climate disruption.”
Polar scientists report that, overall, northern sea ice is not just lower in extent but is thinner as well.
Arctic region warming at twice the global average rate
Scientists who made coring tests off Barrow in Alaska – which recorded the earliest ever spring melt in 78 years of record-keeping – report that where they would have expected thicknesses of up to 150 centimetres, they were recording depths of only 80 to 100 cm.
The Northern hemisphere as a whole had “exceptionally low” snow cover for April and May of this year, and the count for the three spring months of March, April and May was the lowest in 50 years of observation by Rutgers University Snow Lab.
“We have already seen an unusually early start to melting around the margins of Greenland in 2016”, said Jonathan Bamber, director of the Bristol Glaciology Centre at the University of Bristol.
“The new findings from NSIDC of exceptionally low sea ice extent for May and the lowest Northern Hemisphere snow cover in April for 50 years is in line with the longer-term, decadal trends for the Arctic as a whole.
“The region is undergoing warming at around twice the global average, and the ice is responding accordingly.”
Tim Radford writes for Climate News Network, where this article was originally published.
