Arctic Sea-Ice Sheet Shrinks to Record, U.S. Scientist

http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20070810_index.html
Arctic Sea-Ice Sheet Shrinks to Record, U.S. Scientists Say
2007-09-21 04:01 (New York)


By Mathew Carr
Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) -- The size of the arctic sea-ice sheet
shrank to a record level, 22 percent lower than the previous record
in 2005, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in
Denver, Colorado.
The sheet was 4.1 million square kilometers (1.6 million
square miles) on Sept. 16, which will probably be the smallest size
this year, the center said in a statement on its Web site. It has
shrunk from 5.3 million square kilometers in September 2005,
roughly the size of Texas and California combined. The minimum was
5.7 million square kilometers in 2006, the center said last year.
The long-term average minimum for the sheet after the northern
hemisphere summer, based on data from 1979 to 2000, is 6.7 million
square kilometers, it said.


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