Record high temperatures this year shrank the Arctic’s floating sea ice to its lowest level on record, NASA researchers said Monday.
“I’ve never seen such a warm, crazy winter in the Arctic,” said National Snow and Ice Data Center director Mark Serreze. “The heat was relentless.” The snow data center jointly issued the findings with the space agency Monday.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration satellites showed Arctic sea ice peaked at 5.607 million square miles as of March 24, “a new record low winter maximum extent in the satellite record that started in 1979,” according to the findings. The previous record was 5.612 million square miles last year.
“The 13 smallest maximum extents on the satellite record have happened in the last 13 years,” the researchers said.
Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said the new low tracks with the unseasonably, record high temperatures experienced worldwide in December, January and February.
Meier also said unfavorable wind patterns in the Arctic weren’t good for ice formation this winter “because they brought warm air from the south and prevented expansion of the ice cover.”
He said future reductions in ice flows will be affected the most by increasingly warm ocean waters.
NASA has come against criticism in recent weeks by Republican lawmakers for increasing its satellite program for tracking climate events on Earth at the expense of its space exploration mission.
At a recent hearing on the agency’s fiscal 2017 budget request, House science committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said he would be looking to rebalance the space agency’s budget back to its primary mission. Other Republicans on the committee also said the climate budget should be reined in.
