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as we enter the dog days of summer in

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the United States things are heating up

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even more further north with melting

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Arctic sea ice and here to join us from

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NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in

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Greenbelt Maryland is dr. Tom Wagner

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thank you for joining us

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hey thank you for having me so the

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Arctic is losing sea ice at a faster

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rate in recent years how are things

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looking this year and what are we seeing

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in the long term trend well the good

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news is we aren't sent to see another

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record low as we have been for the last

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few years but the bad news is we're

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still set to see one of the lowest sea

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ice extent on record and the ice is

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about as thin as it's been if you go

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back to the 1980s when the satellite

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record really starts we've lost almost

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two thirds of the volume of sea ice that

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used to be there and that's important

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because it's a really important part of

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the Earth's system are we seeing these

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changes in the Arctic the simple answer

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is this the planet is warming up but the

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Arctic because of various reasons warms

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about twice as fast as the rest of the

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globe like the heat gets concentrated up

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there and that's causing us to lose sea

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ice and also lose ice from all the

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glaciers around the Arctic one of the

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most important changes is that as the

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ice recedes water is a darker color so

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it absorbs more of that incoming

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sunlight one of the ways I like to think

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about it the Arctic sea ice is kind of

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like a mirrored hat on the top of the

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planet and we're taking that hat off

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what is NASA doing to understand these

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changes so NASA does a couple of

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different things you know the first

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thing is we study the Arctic with

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satellites and you need satellites to do

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it because the scales we're talking

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about our continent level and we use

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satellites like ice at which has lasers

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that go down and bounce off the surface

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and tell us how high or how thick the

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ice is we use satellites like Terra and

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Aqua which take really precise pictures

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of the Arctic and also things that tell

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us about the temperature change in the

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Arctic and we have this whole myriad of

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other satellites that tell us about the

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composition of the atmosphere and the

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characteristics of the clouds but on top

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of that NASA is kind of a leading agency

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for aircraft studies of the earth and we

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have some major missions like ice bridge

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and a rise which is going out this fall

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we take aircraft that are literally

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festooned with instruments to study the

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Arctic how will these change

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affect the united states so the changes

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in the Arctic are probably already

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affecting the US but that's kind of a

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cutting edge of the research some people

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say that storm tracks like hurricane

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sandy may have been altered because of

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Arctic change we also know that general

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precipitation patterns are things are

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probably changed as things like the

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Jetstream changes along with the Arctic

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and also larger scale fluctuations in

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the Earth's atmosphere and climate where

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can we learn more one of the easiest

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places to go to is nasa.gov dr. Tom