British scientists claim to have made a discovery which puts the thickness of local lake ice into real perspective.They said there is now evidence that the polar ice cap could disappear in as little as 13 years if global warming continues at its current pace.
The claim is based upon measurements
of the ice cap made by the British nuclear submarine H.M.S. Tireless.
Its voyage ended last month off Prudhoe Bay after an explosion onboard killed two sailors
Oceanographer Peter Wadhams had already collected enough 3-D sonar measurements to indicate, he claims, that the ice has thinned by nearly 50 percent in the past four decades.
British Antarctic Survey Director Chris Rapley said Wadhams' research is valuable.
"Peter's result and indeed other results about how much open water there is in the winter in the Arctic these recent winters, how little multiyear ice there is now. Ice that survives several seasons, this is all part of a pattern that suggests things are happening more quickly than we had expected," Rapley said.
Receding sea ice is at the heart of the debate over whether to list polar bears as threatened under the endangered species act.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife agency said it has received nearly 700,000 comments on the proposal.
Public comment ended yesterday.
Gov. Sarah Palin has written two letters to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne opposing the listing and yesterday the North Slope Borough weighed in.
Borough Mayor Edward Itta said the community remains concerned over the loss of sea ice, but said listing the polar bear as endangered could impact subsistence hunting, which he says has no bearing on the health of the polar bear population.
