The polar night starts in October and ends when spring appears.
Despite the fact that the polar night set down in the Arctic, the level of sea ice is not growing as it should be. The polar night starts in October and ends when spring appears. While it is dark and cold in the Arctic, the level of sea ice usually grows. This is not the case this year, apparently.
Instead of growing, the level of sea ice is actually decreasing. This is a very unusual event because normally, ice levels in the North Pole returned to base-line values during this time of the year. This is happening due to the intense warmth originating from the oceans and the air.
Despite the fact that the climate is changing and temperatures are rising, this shouldn’t happen because normally, the temperatures in the Arctic are very low this time of year. This is a concerning event because the North Pole already lost a lot of sea ice and animals are about to lose their habitat.
The worst part is that this continues to happen, even now when winter is coming. In some parts of the Arctic the temperatures reached 35 degrees F above the normal temperature. This has slowed the growth of sea ice even more.
“I’ve never seen anything like it this last year and a half,” Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said.
Sea ice is rapidly disappearing from the North Pole. In the last months, the Arctic has lost a lot of its ice. Researchers mentioned that they studied these temperatures and observed that in the last 70 years, this never happened. They also mentioned that this is a new and concerning thing for the North Pole.
Researchers said that they are still trying to figure out why this is happening because climate change is not the only factor that is causing this. One factor is that the Arctic sea ice has some problem. Old ice has disappeared and the new ice is much more fragile which causes it to break easily.
Researchers mentioned that they are going to make more studies in order to establish what is causing the sea ice to melt during the polar night.
Image source: Pixabay
