Arctic Ice Caps Shrink To Third Smallest In 30 Years - Science News - redOrbit

It will not begin to grow again until fall begins.

As of last Saturday, the sea ice only covered approximately 2 million square miles of ocean. In 2007, during the biggest melt in 30 years, the ice only covered 1.6 million square miles, while in the following year the ice covered 1.8 million square miles.
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The size of the Arctic ice cap has increased approximately 14 times over the past 31 years, but the decline of sea ice has definitely been the trend, which directly corresponds to a rise in temperature over the same period, Meier said.

According to Meier, it is better to look at the long-term trend than just year to year.

The record ice loss of 2007 occurred during an unusual Arctic summer, full of destructive events. There were strong winds and high temperatures, which resulted in tragic losses from an already weakened ice pack, said Meier.
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Mead Treadwell, of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, said that he flew hundreds of miles across the Beaufort Sea on a Coast Guard flight this week without ever seeing any multi-year ice. [From a plane, can you always tell how old the ice is? What was the state of the ice 40, 100, 1000, and 10,000 years ago?]

"It's a significant difference for anyone who has been watching this ocean for some time," he said.

[When we "lost" the mile-thick ice at Chicago, was it "tragic"? Should we spend trillions of dollars trying to restore it?]

When the glacier reached its southernmost limit about 20,000 years ago, the ice was a mile thick at Chicago