Arctic sea ice melting faster than anyone thought possible

Arctic sea ice is melting at a rate far faster than anyone thought, and it is already wildly, and perhaps permanently, changing the region, and the planet. Historically, sea ice forms every winter across the top of the planet, and covers much of the Arctic Ocean. Every summer, the ice melts a bit and retreats, only to repeat the cycle again. But since the 1980s, the ice
has been retreating further and further overall, contributing to changes to ecosystems, and erosion so severe it is biting off chunks of coastlines in Alaska, Canada and elsewhere. It even is exacerbating the warming trend in the Arctic, and even indirectly contributing to land ice melt, permafrost thaw, and sea level rise.


As 2016 continues apace to be one of the warmest years on record , Arctic sea ice levels appear to be among the lowest on record, said Tom Wagner, program manager for NASA's cryosphere research — a name given to the study of frozen regions of the planet. "It doesn't look like the ice is healing or growing back."


"By some accounts we have lost more than two- thirds of the ice that used to be back in the 1980s," Wagner said. "This looks to be a very, very long-term trend and we are only going to be losing more ice. This matters because the "health" of the ice is considered a general indicator of what is going on in the Earth's total climate system.

"This is not something that will affect humanity in the far off future," Wagner said, "loss of this ice is already wildly changing the Arctic," and rippling outward to the rest of the planet.
For example, sea ice forms a kind of a hat over the ocean that holds heat in. As the ice recedes, Wagner said, the ocean releases more heat into the atmosphere. This in turn, researchers think, could be speeding up permafrost thaw and the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and other large chunks of land ice.

"The planet is not just changing, it is changed," Wagner said. "And we have to deal with the change that has occurred. The melting of the glaciers in Alaska and Canada and Greenland is already raising sea levels to the point that Miami and New York are experiencing flooding."