Global Warming Puts the Arctic on Thin Ice

Average temperatures in the Arctic region are rising twice as fast as they are elsewhere in the world. Arctic ice is getting thinner, melting and rupturing. For example, the largest single block of ice in the Arctic, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, had been around for 3,000 years before it started cracking in 2000. Within two years it had split all the way through and is now breaking into pieces.




Since 1979, the size of the summer polar ice cap has shrunk more than 20 percent. (Illustration from NASA)