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By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Arctic perennial sea ice — the kind that stays frozen year-round — declined by 14 percent between 2004 and 2005, climate scientists said on Wednesday, in what one expert saw as a clear sign of greenhouse warming.
Researchers have been monitoring the shrinking polar ice cap with satellites since the 1970s. What is new, and remarkable to scientists, is that the decline has been observed in winter as well as summer.
“The greenhouse phenomenon is actually becoming apparent in the Arctic,” said Josefino Comiso of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center outside Washington DC. “The winter warming signal is finally coming out.”
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