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.”
