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the polar ice caps have been shrinking

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in summer and expanding in winter for

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millions of years but in the last three

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decades the Arctic sea ice at the end of

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each summers melt has been getting

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steadily smaller the decline was already

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alarming but in 2007 when the sea ice

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melts shattered the previous record by

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almost twenty-five percent researchers

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at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

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wondered is this an anomaly or part of

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an even more alarming trend we have had

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low ice cover since 1998 in the Arctic

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and what that means is that you have

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more open water in the region and with

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more open water you're getting more

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solar energy into the system so the

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Arctic Ocean has actually been warming

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up as the ice melts less light energy is

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reflected back into space and more of

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the sun's energy is absorbed into the

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ocean which fuels further melting in

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march two thousand eight the ice cap

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rebounded to a near normal winter level

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but much of this ice was thin single

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year ice and after a record rate of

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melting in the month of August the ice

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shrank to its second smallest extent on

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record if it keeps on going then the

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potential is that you lose the perennial

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ice altogether then we'll have a blue

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ocean in the Arctic now if the ocean

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becomes low there will be a lot of

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environmental impacts there are a lot of

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ecological impacts chemie so says the 30

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years of satellite data we have on

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Arctic sea ice suggests that it's not

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likely to recover as a scientist he is

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intrigued by the trends but personally

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he worries about the planets future well

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it makes me feel sad

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a lot of things can happen in terms of

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the impacts to the environment impacts

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to the ecosystem not just in the Arctic

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but for the whole whole earth and the

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ocean is such a big part of the climate

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system and you / curve it a little bit

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and you're going to chance the climate

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of the world one result of such global

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climate change has already begun to

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emerge at the other end of the earth

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summer sea ice minima in the southern

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hemisphere have not been declining as

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warmer ocean water promotes evaporation

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which creates more snow to feed the

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Antarctic ice fields NASA scientists are

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using a suite of satellites to study sea

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ice at both poles trying to better

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understand how a complex set of

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phenomena such as cloud cover

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reflectivity a thickness of the ice

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weather patterns like La Nina and El