Arctic Sea ice is at its record low in the recent geologic history, a major international study has claimed.
The first comprehensive history of Arctic ice, carried out by a team of scientists from five countries, found that the recent retreat is the worst in thousands of years.
“The ice loss that we see today — the ice loss that started in the early 20th century and sped up during the last 30 years — appears to be unmatched over at least the last few thousand years,” said Leonid Polyak, a research scientist at Byrd Polar Research Centre at Ohio State University.
Mr Polyak is lead author of the research paper which will be published in the upcoming issue of Quarternary Science Reviews.
For decades, scientists have strived to collect sediment cores from the difficult-to-access Arctic Ocean floor, to discover what the Arctic was like in the past. Their most recent goal: to bring a long-term perspective to the ice loss we see today.
Now, the team led by Ohio State University has re-examined the data from past and ongoing studies — nearly 300 in all — and combined them to form a big-picture view of the pole’s climate history stretching back millions of years, the university said.