Arctic ice melt is now biggest on record, German experts say

Sep 10, 2011, 13:53 GMT

Bremen, Germany - This year's summer melt of ice in the Arctic Sea has set a new record, with ice cover shrinking to just 4.24 million square kilometres, scientists at the University of Bremen said Friday.

The data undercut the previous record - 4.27 million square kilometres - set in 2007. Since observations began in 1972, the summer ice area has declined by about 50 per cent, with most scientists blaming global warming.

Georg Heygster of the Environmental Physics Institute, which observes the ice with satellite and other data, said the change was now too pronounced to be explained as a natural fluctuation.

He warned that the shrinkage could affect world fish catches.

'Micro-organisms, which live on the underside of the ice and which are the start of the food chain all the way up to us humans, have got less and less habitat,' he said.

Ice cover on the Arctic Sea normally varies - from 15 million square kilometres in March, after the winter cold, to about 5 million square kilometres in September, after the summer melt.

The withdrawal of the ice re-opened both the North-West and the North-East Passage, shipping lanes between the Atlantic and Pacific that have been navigable in summer since 2008.