Arctic ice at second-lowest level on record, global warming blamed

The Kremlin hopes North Pole warming can open a canal through the Arctic and transform its commercial potential.

Arctic ice has hit low levels, experts say.

There was less ice in the Arctic last week than at any point besides the summer of 2012, researchers say.

Climate change is largely to blame for the speed at which ice around the North Pole is melting, they said.

“We’re seeing climate change at work because the warm summers become warmer and the cold winters aren’t as cold as they were,” said Mark Serreze, director of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre, which has been keeping satellite records of how frozen the Arctic Ocean is since 1979.

Natural climate phenomena lead to slight annual fluctuations but the overall trend has been downwards for a decade, Mr Serreze said.

The melting ice has far-reaching geopolitical implications.

Russia's nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika leaves the port of Saint Petersburg this week. Picture: AFP

On Tuesday Russia dispatched Arktika, a nuclear icebreaker that it claims is the world’s largest, from St Petersburg at the start of a two-week journey to develop a route from Murmansk to the Bering Strait near Alaska.

The Kremlin hopes that warming could open a canal through the Arctic and transform its commercial potential.

Last week the extent of the ice-covered ocean extending from the North Pole towards Russia, Greenland, Alaska and Canada reached a summer low of 1.4 million sq miles (2.2m sq kilo.

In 2012, the only year with less ice, it shrank to 1.3 million sq miles.

The decisive factor appeared to be a huge storm that broke thinning ice which was in the process of melting.

“What happens in the Arctic, as we say, doesn’t stay in the Arctic,” Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University said.

“We see the impact of Arctic warming in the form of unprecedented heatwaves, floods, droughts, wildfire that we are now contending with here in the US and around the rest of the world.”

The Times