OSLO (Reuters) - Natural swings in the Arctic climate have caused up to half the precipitous losses of sea ice around the North Pole in recent decades, with the rest driven by man-made global warming, scientists said on Monday.
The study indicates that an ice-free Arctic Ocean, often feared to be just years away, in one of the starkest signs of man-made global warming, could be delayed if nature swings back to a cooler mode.
Natural variations in the Arctic climate "may be responsible for about 30–50 percent of the overall decline in September sea ice since 1979," the U.S.-based team of scientists wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Sea ice has shrunk steadily and hit a record low in September 2012 -- late summer in the Arctic -- in satellite records dating back to 1979.
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:51PM
When our major cities that started as ports, and our shipping infrastructure, and our transportation systems to all of the commercial and vacation-industry sites that depend on being near the ocean shore, not to mention *everything* on various islands, start getting washed away, "precisely why" is not going to be the first question (except possibly from the insurance lawyers).