[music builds] Text-on-screen: The melt season is here for Arctic sea ice.
Every year, this frozen, floating pack of sea water grows in the winter and shrinks in the summer,
pulsing with ocean and wind currents and responding to changes in weather.
On March 6, Arctic sea ice appeared to reach its maximum extent for the season
At 14.62 million square kilometers, it’s the fifth lowest in the satellite record, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Compared to the 1981-2010 average the March sea ice pack has lost about a million square kilometers, 400,000 square miles
an area the size of Texas and Arizona put together.
The ice pack is also getting thinner, as measured by field studies and satellites like NASA’s ICESat-2,
and is more susceptible to summer melting.
Generally speaking, warming global temperatures are the primary drivers of the change
but regional factors and weather events also play a role.
New research suggests atmospheric rivers, the same phenomena that have been drenching the U.S. west coast recently,
are transporting more heat into the Arctic north of Europe and contributing to ice loss.
Sea ice isn’t just important in the Arctic.
It influences the energy budget of our planet and affects weather patterns throughout the world.
[NASA logo. Music fades.]