Arctic summer ice latest

It’s the time of reckoning again for the Arctic ice, as summer comes to an end and the freezing seasons starts. The scientists are constantly improving their measuring and forecasting, so the results come as no real surprise.

Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar Research puts the ice extent figure at 5.1 million km2, which is only 70 percent of the longer-term average between 1979 and 2000. It is not as low as the schocking record low of 4.1 million km2 in 2007. But the experts stress that does not mean a recovery. The slight increase this year is fresh ice, which is less thick. The AWI’s Professor Ruediger Gerdes says the proportion of thicker perennial ice has been reduced so far that summer ice cover is much more sensitive to atmospheric anomalies than it was 10 or 20 years ago.

Two ships went through the north-east passage this summer. The Arctic is changing fast.