Northern Ice is Melting at a Dramatic Rate

The combination of declining Arctic ice and Greenland's melting ice sheet are part of a troubling trend that cannot be ignored. As of June 2012, Arctic sea ice declined by 1.10 million square miles and as of July a total of 97 percent of Greenland's ice sheet had melted.

According to satellite images from NASA (see above left), Greenland's ice sheet is melting at an alarming rate. Before July 2012, the most extensive melting seen by satellites in the past three decades was about 55 percent. Ice core records reveal that we have not seen such pronounced melting of Greenland's ice sheet since 1889. To make matters worse a 70 square miles (181 square km) iceberg broke off Greenland’s Petermann Glacier.

Arctic Monitoring Stations Report CO2 Levels of 400 PPM

The Arctic region continues to serve as the global climate “canary in a coal” mine. Now, as with average temperature rise, the region is leading into a new troubling milestone as monitoring stations near a remote outpost near Barrow, Alaska are among several such stations to report that average concentrations of CO2 have reached an average of 400 parts per million (PPM) this spring.