WASHINGTON: The arctic ice cap melted at an unprecedented rate in mid-2007, losing an area of ice the size of the state of Alaska, US scientists said at a conference this week.
"The average rate of loss of sea ice every summer year to year up to 2006 was equal to an area the size of West Virginia," or about 62,800 square kilometres, said Michael Steele, the senior oceanographer at the University of Washington in Seattle.
However the decrease in ice between 2006 and 2007 "was almost equivalent to the area of Alaska," or some 1.7 million kilometres, Steele told.
"It was a huge retreat," said Steele, one of the researchers who discussed the subject at the annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in San Francisco, California.
The arctic ice cap currently covers around 4.13 million square kilometres, its smallest surface in modern times, said another conference speaker, Wieslaw Maslowski, an oceanographer at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
The Arctic Ocean could thus be completely ice-free during the three summer months by 2013, Maslowski said at the conference.
Steele refused to make the same prediction, but did say that the Arctic Ocean has never been as hot during the summer months.
"The ocean warmed up at temperatures never seen before ... it was five degrees Celsius warmer than average," said Steele. "It's very large."
