Ice Stories

I was reading on the Stop Global Warming website and the news is not good. Just take a look at some recent news about ICE...

There is a huge ice shelf in the Antarctic (the size of Connecticut!) that is in the last stages of collapse and could break free any day.

According to a Guardian article, this Wilkins shelf is the largest slab of ice so far to disintegrate in the Antarctic.

See Climate Progress for more

FACT: Scientists predicted in 1993 that the Wilkins shelf would collapse within 30 years, but the increasing effects of global warming have caused it to melt at double the anticipated rate.

Go to the other end of the planet and researchers say that more than 90% of the sea ice in the Arctic is only one or two years old which makes it thinner and more vulnerable to melting (NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center)

What does that mean? Sea ice is important because it reflects sunlight away from Earth. The more it melts, the more heat is absorbed by the ocean, heating up the planet more and adversely changing weather patterns worldwide.

FACT: The amount of thick sea ice hit a record wintertime low of just 378,000 square miles this year, down 43 percent from last year. The amount of older sea ice lost is larger than the state of Texas.