Arctic Sea Ice Quotes

The entire North Polar ice cap is disappearing before our very eyes. It's been the size of the continental United States for the last 3 million years and now 40 percent is gone and the rest of it is going.

The island is named Oooguruk, an Inupiaq word meaning 'bearded seal,' an animal plentiful on the shores of Alaska's North Slope.

There's one place, and one place only, to see polar bears in America. You have to travel to the country's northernmost point, the very apex of Alaska's North Slope, to the permafrost shores that stretch out on either side from the Inupiat town of Kaktovik.

You can't tie a rope around the ice sheet. You can't build a wall around the ice sheets.

Remember...this year has already seen more billion-dollar weather-related disasters than any year in US history. Last year was the warmest ever recorded on planet Earth. Arctic sea ice is near all-time record lows. Record floods from Pakistan to Queensland to the Mississippi basin; record drought from the steppes of Russia to the plains of Texas...This is what climate change looks like in its early stages.

Sea ice conditions have remained stable in Antarctica generally.

In the Arctic, things are already getting freaky. Temperatures have warmed three times faster than the global average.

We need to be realistic. There is very little we can do now to stop the ice from disappearing from the North Pole in the summer. And we probably cannot prevent the melting of the permafrost and the resulting release of methane. In addition, I fear that we may be too late to help the oceans maintain their ability to absorb carbon dioxide.

Everything happening at the South Pole, like the North Pole, has repercussions everywhere on the planet.

Sandy was particularly destructive because it was prevented from moving back out to sea by a "blocking pattern" associated with the jet stream. There's debate about this, but one recent study suggested that melting sea ice in the Arctic may lead to such blocking.

The bearded iceberg

For several days in July of 2012, Greenland surface ice cover melted more than at any time in 30 years of satellite observation. During that month, an estimated 97% of the ice sheet thawed.