Through the past years global warming has been a topic doused with plenty of uncertainty and a lot of doubt. The fact that has remained through all of the debates is that the Arctic Ice Circle is seeing dramatic changes that it has never witness before. In the summer of 2007, the Arctic ice cap shrank so much this summer that waves briefly lapped along two long-imagined Arctic shipping routes, the Northwest Passage over Canada and the Northern Sea Route over Russia.
Over all, the floating ice dwindled to an extent unparalleled in a century or more, by several estimates. You may ask what is truly causing this shift in the ice? It is no mystery that increased emissions of greenhouse gases are causing these dramatic changes in the ice sheets. Some scientists believe that the system of ice is trending towards a new watery state and that greenhouse gases are the root of it. On the contrary, arctic experts want to believe that the ice shifts can also be somewhat contributed to more natural factors, such as the wind.
According to the article, “A new study, led by Son Nghiem at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and appearing this week in Geophysical Research Letters, used satellites and buoys to show that winds since 2000 had pushed huge amounts of thick old ice out of the Arctic basin past Greenland. The thin floes that formed on the resulting open water melted quicker or could be shuffled together by winds and similarly expelled, the authors said.”
If this were the case you would think that these regions have had to at least experience an instance where something similar to this has occurred. Yet, experts are having trouble finding any records from Russia, Alaska, or elsewhere that such a widespread ice retreat has happened in recent times. This leads us to believe that the finger cannot be pointed at Mother Nature, but instead it has to be pointed at us humans. Some scientists believe that the change in atmospheric gases have now taken an irreversible turn for the worst.
The main issue is that the thick ice is the ice that is melting. Thick ice is known to characteristically be able to endure months of nonstop summer sunshine, but it is disappearing at an unusually alarming rate, which leaves room for more dangerous thinner ice to form. Thin ice is the most dangerous form of ice in the Arctic Ocean because it can thaw quickly, but also refreeze just as fast if the temperatures are just right. This causes weary, treacherous travels by boats and other vessels who venture forth through the arctic region, because their path could be clear for one moment but within the next minute ice could freeze around their ship.
It is clear that climate change is upon us and we should definitely do what all we can to stop it. The Arctic Ice tells us a story that we just cannot refute or choose to disbelieve. The truth is in the ice.
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