Warming in the Arctic shrank the ice covering the polar ocean this year to its second-lowest extent in four decades, scientists announced Monday, yet another sign of how climate change is rapidly transforming the region. Satellites recorded this year's sea ice minimum at 3.74 million square kilometers on Sept. 15, only the second time the ice has been measured below 4 million square kilometers in 40 years of record keeping, said researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The record low of 3.41 million square kilometers, reached in 2012 after a late-season cyclonic storm broke up the remaining ice, is not much below what researchers see today.
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