WARM POLE

Artic ice melts in summer heat

08-10-2009 | AP

Panama Star TUKTOYAKTUK. The Arctic Ocean has given up tens of thousands more square miles of ice in a relentless summer of melt, with scientists watching through satellite eyes for a possible record low polar ice cap.

From the barren Arctic shore of this village in Canada's far northwest, 1,500 miles north of Seattle, veteran observer Eddie Gruben has seen the summer ice retreating more each decade as the world has warmed. By this weekend the ice edge lay some 80 miles at sea.

Global average temperatures rose 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degree Celsius) in the past century, but Arctic temperatures rose twice as much or even faster, almost certainly in good part because of manmade greenhouse gases, researchers say. As of Thursday, the US National Snow and Ice Data Center reported, the polar ice cap extended over 2.61 million square miles after having shrunk an average 41,000 square miles a day in July -- equivalent to one Indiana or three Belgiums daily.

Observation satellites' remote sensors will tell researchers in September whether the polar cap diminished this summer to its smallest size on record.

Most of the sea ice will be new, thinner and weaker annual formations.