Ecology
One of the leading British experts claims that the collapse of all Arctic sea ice will occur in four years.
Professor Peter Wadhams of the University of Cambridge calls this a global catastrophe and calls for urgent measures that could lower the Earth's temperature. For several years, he studied ice thickness data obtained from submarines passing in the Arctic Ocean. The scientist warned of a collapse of ice back in 2007, when the area of sea ice was 4.17 million square kilometers.
This year, this figure fell by another 500,000 square kilometers, thus reducing the area of Arctic ice to 3.5 million square kilometers.
Global warming is considered the main reason for the melting of ice. As it warms, less ice forms in winter and more ice melts during the summer months.
Professor Wadhams predicts that by 2015-2016 there will be no ice left in the Arctic.
Reducing the ice level opens up great opportunities for transport routes and provides access to oil and gas resources. However, melting ice will lead to a catastrophic acceleration in global warming.