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NASA shares time-lapse video of melting, shrinking Arctic sea ice over past three decades! - Watch
One of the reasons is that the multiyear ice used to be a pretty consolidated ice pack and now we`re seeing relatively smaller chunks of old ice interspersed with younger ice.
New Delhi: Climate change is working its effects on the globe at an unusually high pace and there are numerous evidences to shed light on its impact across the world.
The latest one is quite disturbing. American space agency NASA recently released an animated time-lapse video, showing how the Arctic sea ice has deteriorated over the years, thinning, shrinking and disappearing, courtesy the warming atmosphere.
"What we've seen over the years is that the older ice is disappearing," said Walt Meier, a sea ice researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
"Unlike in the 1980s, it's not so much as ice being flushed out -though that's still going on too," Meier said.
"What's happening now more is that the old ice is melting within the Arctic Ocean during the summertime. One of the reasons is that the multiyear ice used to be a pretty consolidated ice pack and now we're seeing relatively smaller chunks of old ice interspersed with younger ice. These isolated floes of thicker ice are much easier to melt," he added.
Direct measurements of sea ice thickness are sporadic and incomplete across the Arctic, so scientists have developed estimates of sea ice age and tracked their evolution from 1984 to the present.
(Video courtesy: NASA Goddard)