U.S.-Size Ice Cube Melts

Posted on Nov 28, 2012

NASA Goddard Photo and Video (CC BY 2.0)

In a report released at the U.N. climate talks in Doha, Qatar, this week, the World Meteorological Organization said an area of Arctic ice bigger than the United States disappeared under warmer temperatures this year.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

The Associated Press via Salon:

[I]t was the ice melt that seemed to dominate the annual climate report, with the U.N. concluding ice cover had reached “a new record low” in the area around the North Pole and that the loss from March to September was a staggering 11.83 million square kilometers (4.57 million square miles) – an area bigger than the United States.

“The alarming rate of its melt this year highlighted the far-reaching changes taking place on Earth’s oceans and biosphere,” WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said. “Climate change is taking place before our eyes and will continue to do so as a result of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have risen constantly and again reached new records.

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