GREENBELT, Md., Oct. 4 (UPI) -- New data from NASA satellites show summertime sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean narrowly avoided a new record low, the space agency said.
The near-record ice-melt followed higher-than-average summer temperatures that approached the record low observed in 2007, a NASA release said Tuesday.
Ice cover shrinks each summer as the sun rises higher in the northern sky, reaching its annual minimum extent in September.
Arctic sea ice extent on Sept. 9, the lowest point this year, was 1.67 million square miles.
The continued low minimum sea ice levels are part of a large-scale decline pattern scientists say they have observed over the past three decades, attributed largely to warming temperatures caused by climate change.
"The sea ice is not only declining, the pace of the decline is becoming more drastic," Joey Comiso, senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said. "The older, thicker ice is declining faster than the rest, making for a more vulnerable perennial ice cover."
Since 1979, September arctic sea ice extent has declined by 12 percent per decade, researchers said.
