This year more than one million square miles of ice in the Arctic Ocean's floating cap melted away over the summer, bringing the minimum ice area to what appears to be this year's minimum of 1.59 million square miles on Sunday. The Arctic floating ice cap is again gaining size under the deep Arctic chill which comes with the 6-month Arctic winter. Scientists believe the ice retreat this year was probably unmatched in the 20th century, including during a warm period in the 1930s.

While we only have satellite imagery since 1979, there are old-fashioned Russian and Alaskan records which point out the dire situation. "I do not think that there was anything like we observe today" in the 1930s or 1940s, said an ice expert at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Igor Polyakov, quoted by New York Times. The new minimum ice area reached this year is actually 22 percent less than the previous low in September 2005. In fact, this year is probably the lowest ice cover since record keeping began in the late 1800s.

Summer Arctic sea ice has been declining at a rate of over 8% per decade over the last thirty years, according to Walt Meier, a research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center. This rate has allegedly accelerated over the last six years, Mr. Meier says.

"2005 was the previous record and what happened then had really astounded us; we had never seen anything like that, having so little sea ice at the end of summer. Then along comes 2007 and it has completely shattered that old record," said Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the NSIDC, in an interview with BBC.

Sea ice extent now stands at 1.61 million square miles, an increase of 19,000 square miles compared to the above-mentioned value of 1.59 million square miles observed on September 16, which appears to be the 2007 minimum, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. As the long winter progresses, the sea ice recovers its size, usually reaching its maximum in March before the melting cycle begins again to reach a minimum size in September.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center also announces that the Northwest Passage is still open but is starting to refreeze, but the Northeast Passage (the Northern Sea Route) along the coast of Siberia, is still closed by a narrow band of sea ice.

"If there is no summer sea ice, then there will be no ice-based Arctic ecosystem," said Ben Stewart, a spokesman for Greenpeace U.K., in a telephone interview with Bloomberg. "It's the canary in the coalmine: the impacts of climate change seem to be happening faster than the scientists predicted a few years ago."

There is still a slim chance the ice cap will shrink more this year, but the upward trend makes it very unlikely. However, it has happened before. What actually happens is that ice either melts a little more or its area shrinks due to the motion of the ice.

The developments point out we are heading towards an ice-free summer by 2030 or so, rather than 2100 as previously estimated. This would be the first time this has happened in as many as 800,000 years. The climate changes associated with the complete Arctic meltdown in summer will affect the entire globe with yet unforeseeable consequences.

Photo: National Snow and Ice Data Center