TUKTOYAKTUK, Northwest Territories — The Arctic Ocean has given up tens of thousands more square miles of ice per day 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, 1,500 miles 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 80 miles at sea.
“Forty years ago, it was 40 miles out,” said Gruben, 89.
Global average temperatures rose 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past century, but Arctic temperatures rose twice as much or even faster, almost certainly in good part because of man- made greenhouse gases, researchers say.
In late July, the mercury soared to almost 86 degrees 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 U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported, the polar ice cap extended over 2.61 million square miles after having shrunk by an average of 41,000 square miles a day in July — equivalent to one Indiana or three Belgiums daily.
