Floating ice cover of the Arctic Ocean has lost about two-thirds of its thickness over the past 60 years, with 70 percent of the current ice cap melting within one year, the Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring said on Thursday in a report
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th September, 2020) Floating ice cover of the Arctic Ocean has lost about two-thirds of its thickness over the past 60 years, with 70 percent of the current ice cap melting within one year, the Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring said on Thursday in a report.
"The decrease in sea ice cover in the Arctic continues, especially rapidly during the seasonal minimum. According to satellite observations (from 1979 to 2019), the ice area in September decreased by 12.9 percent over the past decade. Since 1958, the Arctic sea ice cover has lost an average of about two-thirds of its thickness, and now 70 percent of the sea ice cap is made up of seasonal ice, which forms and melts in one year," the report read.
On September 15, 2020, the US National Snow and Ice Data Center recorded the yearly minimum of the Arctic sea ice cover, which was 3.74 million square kilometers (1.44 million square miles). The figure is the second record low over the entire period of observations, after the record low of 3.41 million square kilometers recorded in 2012.
