Arctic will no longer have ice fields

'We have not encountered any ice fields at sea Laptevyx (*)' - Igor Semiletov, a member of the international Arctic survey team, informed the Itar-Tass news agency on September 23.

This event raises concerns that global warming is happening faster than the United Nations (UN) predictions. In February of this year the UN Climate Committee with 2,500 summer sea ice scientists forecast in the Arctic could disappear by the end of the century.

The largest survey of the International Year of the Arctic Expedition program from the Kirkeness port of Norway since early September this year, brings together American, British, German, Russian and Canadian scientists. During their 45-day journey, they conducted studies across the Arctic, from east Siberia to the Barents Sea.

Airy waterways!

From the ship Victor Buynitsky carrying the survey team, the Far Eastern expert of the Russian Institute of Oceanography Igor Semiletov reported: ' We went to places where half a century ago the legendary Fram ship of the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen has to wriggle between ice sheets. The waterway in this sea this year is in all directions well ventilated for ships. The water temperature is nowhere below 3 ^O C '.

The Esmark Glacier in Svalbard Island (Norway) has been 3.5 km shorter since 1966 (photo taken August 23, 2007) (Photo: AFP)

According to Semiletov, this condition is very good for understanding the progress of climate warming. Scientists on the ship can study greenhouse gas emissions distribution at depths of up to 2 km, while previously due to thick ice, they can only learn at a depth of about 100m.

These studies in the Arctic continental shelf will allow the collection of valuable data on how greenhouse gases emit into the atmosphere and make predictions about the effects of warmer climates. planet.

According to oceanographers, the warming has led to the destruction of the Arctic permafrost, clearing carbon dioxide and methane, further increasing the greenhouse effect.

According to gzt.ru, in April 2007, a survey team of the Russian Institute of Oceanography discovered the concentration of methane 1,000 times more than usual in Laptevyx. Previously, this anomaly was found only in the sea of ​​Okhotskoe, where hydrate ore was found.

Revealing new lands

Not only is it more airy, the previously unknown islands are exposed when the summer sea ice in the Arctic narrowed to a record. The environmental newsletter of Tiscali.co.uk said it has exposed a number of new islands around the Svalbard (Norway) archipelago.

Rune Bergstrom, environmental expert Svalbard, said he saw one of the two islands, which is roughly the size of a basketball court. On the other hand, he added that many other islands have recently appeared in Greenland (Denmark) and Canada.

At the August 22 conference gathering 40 scientists and politicians taking place in Ny Alesund, 1,200km from the North Pole, Norwegian Environment Minister Helen Bjoernoy warned: 'The snow and ice conditions are decreasing. ongoing with alarm rate. This speed may take place faster than the UN climate agency's forecast '.

Speaking at the conference, Christopher Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, predicted: 'The Arctic may not be ice by the middle of this decade' and accuse the Intergovernmental Agency of changing. The climate (IPCC) of the UN has underestimated the melting of ice.

NG.THANH

(*) Laptevyx is the Russian sea adjacent to the Arctic Ocean, between the Taimyr peninsula and Severnaya Zemlya island to the north and Novosibirsk to the east. With an area of ​​662,000 km ² , most of the sea area was previously frozen.