WASHINGTON — In a critical climate indicator showing an ever-warming world, the amount of ice in the Arctic Ocean shrank to an all-time low this year.
The ice cap at the North Pole measured 1.32 million square miles Sunday. That is 18 percent smaller than the previous record of 1.61 million square miles set in 2007, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder. Records go back to 1979 based on satellite tracking.
“On top of that, we’re smashing a record that smashed a record,” said data center scientist Walt Meier. Sea ice shrank in 2007 to levels 22 percent below the previous record of 2005.
Ice in the Arctic melts in summer and grows in winter, and it started growing again Monday. In the 1980s, Meier said, summer sea ice would cover an area slightly smaller than the Lower 48 states. Now it is about half that.
The ice in the Arctic “acts like an air conditioner by keeping things cooler,” Meier said.
