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Friday, October 24, 2003

Arctic ice cap melting at worrying rate: NASA

Agence France-Presse
Washington, October 24

The polar ice cap is melting at an alarming rate due to global warming,
according to NASA scientists, with satellite images showing the ice cap has
been shrinking by 10 per cent per decade over the past quarter century.

"It is happening now. We cannot afford to wait a long period of time for
technological solutions," said David Rind of NASA's Goddard Institute for
Space Studies in New York.

"Change is in the air -- literally," he told a press conference in
Washington on Thursday.

By means of a special satellite launched last year to measure the thickness
of the polar ice cap, NASA has confirmed that part of the Arctic Ocean that
remains frozen all year round shrank at a rate of 10 per cent per decade
since 1980, NASA researcher Josefino Comiso said.

"The extent of Arctic sea ice that remains frozen all year reached record
lows in 2002 and 2003," he added.

The polar ice cap expands in winter and contracts in spring and summer. The
part of the ice cap that never melts, even in the warmest summers, is called
the "perennial sea ice."

The oceans and land masses surrounding the Arctic Ocean have warmed one
degree Celsius during the past decade, scientists said.

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