Bloomberg: "Arctic sea-ice retreat is likely to accelerate so rapidly that the Arctic Ocean will be nearly ice-free by the summer by 2040, atmospheric scientists said. Further increases in the atmosphere of so-called greenhouse gases may lead to global warming that causes the already-retreating ice to begin melting four times faster in about 20 years' time, a team led by U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist Marika Holland says today in research published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. 'We have already witnessed major losses in sea ice, but our research suggests that the decrease over the next few decades could be far more dramatic than anything that has happened so far,' Holland said yesterday in a statement posted on the NCAR Web site. 'These changes are surprisingly rapid.' Using climate-change models, Holland's team forecast that by 2040, 'only a small amount of perennial sea ice' could be left, according to the statement. The melting can be slowed by cutting emissions of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, blamed by many scientists as the cause of global warming, it said. 'We don't see this sort of behavior in the absence of increases in greenhouse gas concentrations,' Holland said in an interview aired today by British Broadcasting Corp. radio's 'Today' program. The melting 'very definitely is caused in the climate model by increased greenhouse gas levels.'[...]
"Sea-ice extent, the area of ocean covered by at least 15 percent ice, was about 5.7 million square kilometers (2.2 million square miles) according to a five-day average ending September 14, when this year's coverage was at its lowest, according to the NSIDC. The 2006 minimum, the fourth-lowest on record, compared with the low of 5.32 million square kilometers from 2005. This October, temperatures across much of the Canadian Arctic were as much as 9.3 degrees centigrade warmer than the 1951-1980 average for that month, according to graphics on the Web site of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Those temperatures are slowing the winter refreezing of the sea."
"2008 pres"
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