The Arctic is warming at twice the rate the rest of the planet is, at roughly 2 C. And that warming is having consequences that many scientists are using to illustrate what a warming world will look like.
READ MORE: Reality check — Clearing up misconceptions Canadians have about climate change
This year, the extent of the Arctic sea ice was the fourth lowest since records began. It was 2012 that saw the most dramatic sea ice loss, breaking records. That year, the ice sheet reached 3.41 million square kilometres, 760,000 square kilometres below the previous record (2007) and 1.27 million square kilometres below the 1979 to 2000 average. That’s almost twice the size as the state of Alaska.
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So what does this melting Arctic look like over time? This:
More disturbing to glaciologists and climatologists is the fact that nine of the lowest sea ice extents have all occurred in the last nine years.
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