Arctic ice melted faster than expected

Increasing global temperatures are leading to the melting of northern European ice faster than expected, while the Groenland ice sheet is in danger of disappearing, according to the latest satellite images.

Mark Drinkwater's analytical model
(Photo: esa.int)

Images from the satellite released on September 20, 2006 from the European Space Agency (ESA) show a sudden split of the ice cap from northern Europe to the North Pole, at the end of this summer.

'This is completely unexpected with what we have observed before,' said Mark Drinkwater, who is in charge of analyzing images of the ESA Earth Observation Center based in Italy. ' A ship can go north from the Spitzberg Islands (Norway) or from North Siberia, through cracks from ice sheets, ' he added.

The images were obtained from August 23-25, 2006, showing a large area of ​​cracked ice from the Spitzberg Islands, the northernmost Norway and the Severnaya Zemlya Islands, Siberia until the North Pole.

The arc of the Arctic ice has shrunk because of the warming of the climate. At the end of the summer of 2005, it was only 5.5 million km ² , compared with 8 million km ² in the early 1980s.

Meanwhile, the Groenland ice sheets, the world's second freshwater reserve, lost 2.5 times faster than two years ago, according to NASA satellite images. During the period from May 2004 to April 2006, there were 248 cubic kilometers of ice melted each year, which led to a sea level rise of 0.5 mm / year.

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