Transcript:

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, but …

Meier: “What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic.”

That’s Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado.

He says Arctic sea ice is shrinking dramatically. Each March, sea ice covers a greater area than at any other time of the year. But this year, that peak coverage was the lowest on record since satellites began measuring it in 1979.

This decline has far-reaching consequences because sea ice acts as an air conditioner for the Earth’s climate.

The white sea ice reflects a lot of sunlight back into space, while dark, open ocean absorbs more solar energy as heat. So as the ice shrinks and more water is exposed, temperatures are rising quickly.

Meier: “The Arctic is warming about three times as fast as the rest of the globe, largely due to the loss of sea ice.”

And Meier says Arctic warming can affect weather patterns at lower latitudes.

Meier: “We can potentially get more extreme weather, more extreme heat waves, and potentially more extreme storms.”

So Meier says that the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic has consequences around the world and indicates bigger changes to come.

Reporting credit: ChavoBart Digital Media