Arctic Sea Ice Heading for One of Lowest Extents on Record

Crew members of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy on Arctic sea ice during NASA's ICESCAPE mission in 2011. (Source: NASA/Kathryn Hansen) When I heard the news from the National Snow and Ice Data Center that Arctic sea ice will likely reach its third or fourth lowest minimum extent on record in coming weeks, I started looking for a compelling image to illustrate what's happening — one a bit more interesting than a map or graph. The photograph above is what I've come up with. These two crew members from the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy are taking a break from their work on NASA's ICESCAPE mission in 2011. They're dangling their feet in a melt pond atop Arctic sea ice. I find the photo symbolic of humanity's relationship with the Arctic. Right now, we're dipping our feet into a region that is warming faster than any other on Earth, causing sea ice to shrink in extent and beckoning us to move even farther into this new "frontier," as some call it, to exploit its resources and potential sea routes. This was a theme of President Obama's highly publicized trip to the Arctic in Alaska this week. His visit highlighted what I've called the polar paradox: As the Arctic warms due to human activities, new opportunities for oil and gas drilling are opening up, which if successful will only enhance warming. Obama's visit highlighted the paradox: He decried global warming even as he has approved exploratory drilling in the Arctic and called for steps to enhance our country's ability to operate in the still-forbidding region. (For more on that, check out this overview of the issue in Vox.) Obama argues, persuasively I think, that we will continue to need oil and gas while we are making a transition to a low-carbon future — and better it should come from domestic sources than abroad.