A satellite image shows the decrease in sea ice in September 2019. -
NASA / AP / SIPA
Our planet continues to heat up.
Summer sea ice in the Arctic reduced in 2020 to the second smallest area on record, after 2012, according to satellite observations announced on Monday by the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the United States.
Pack ice is the ice that forms on water.
Every year, part of it melts in summer and reform in winter, normally, but with global warming, it is melting more and more in summer, and its winter area is also shrinking.
Satellites have been observing these areas very precisely since 1979, and the downward trend is clear.
“The year 2020 will stand as an exclamation point on the downward trend in Arctic sea ice extent.
We are headed towards a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean and this year is another nail in the coffin. ”
We've called the likely #Arctic sea ice minimum extent: https://t.co/xfjgaJCPSZ pic.twitter.com/t5DBMJ5o5e
- National Snow and Ice Data Center (@NSIDC) September 21, 2020
"It's been a crazy year in the north"
This year, the minimum for summer sea ice was reached on September 15, with 3.74 million square kilometers, according to the center, which announcements at the end of each winter and each summer refer to.
“It has been a crazy year in the north, with the sea ice almost at the lowest level ever, heat waves (…) in Siberia and huge forest fires,” said Mark Serreze, its director.
“We are heading towards an Arctic Ocean without seasonal ice,” he lamented.
Melting pack ice does not directly contribute to rising sea levels, since the ice is already on the water.
But it contributes indirectly, because the less ice there is, the less solar radiation is reflected and the more it is absorbed by the oceans, which warms them.
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