Arctic ice cap melting at worrisome rate

The polar ice cap is melting at an alarming rate due to global warming, NASA scientists said, with satellite images showing the ice cap continuing to shrink.
Researchers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are worried because global warming speeds up as the ice cap melts, forming a vicious cycle. “Snow and sea-ice are highly reflective because they are white,” Mr Comiso, senior research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said. “Most of the sun’s energy is simply reflected back to space. “With retraction of the ice cover, that means that less of surface is covered by this highly reflective snow and sea ice, and so more energy has been absorbed and the climate warms.”
US and Canadian scientists reported in September that the largest ice shelf in the Arctic off Canada’s coast has broken up due to climate change and could endanger shipping and drilling platforms in the Beaufort Sea. The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf had been in place on the north coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada’s Nunavut territory for at least 3,000 years.
(Agence France-Presse)