A scientist who tracks levels of ice and snow in the Arctic Ocean
told CNSNews.com Monday that there is a “correlation”
between the receding ice in the Arctic Sea and man-made global warming
caused by the greenhouse effect.
But Dr. Walter Meier, a cryosphere scientist at the National Snow
and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colo., admits he can’t
prove that the link is cause-and-effect.
“The thing that’s very clear is that the sea ice changes
that we are seeing go hand in hand with the warming temperature that
we’ve seen, particularly in the Arctic and around the globe,”
Meier told CNSNews.com.
Meier and a group of scientists from NASA – the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration -- announced Monday that this winter had
the fifth lowest maximum ice extent on record.
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“The maximum sea ice extent for 2008-09, reached on Feb. 28,
was 5.85 million square miles,” according to researchers at
the NSDIC. “That is 278,000 square miles less than the average
extent for 1979 to 2000.”
According to NASA, the NSDIC team used two years worth of data from
NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) to
make his observations.
They found that seasonal ice averages about 6 feet in thickness, while
ice that had lasted through more than one summer averages about 9
feet, though it can “grow much thicker in some locations near
the coast.”
