Climate change – Current outlook and research

Arctic’s see summer ice has experienced the new record low according to the European scientists. Since the measurement first started back in 1972 Arctic ice never covered such a small amount of area as it did this year, at only 4.24 million square kilometers. The second lowest year at record was 2007 when Arctic's summer ice covered an area of 4.27 million square kilometers.

The US scientists from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) have calculated that the rate of melting in Arctic is now twice as big as it was first measured back in 1972.

At the same time the international team of scientists led by Stephen Barker of Cardiff University has studied the samples from Greenland's ice sheets. According to these samples climate is very capable to create rapid and abrupt changes because this has been a case of Earth's climate for hundreds of thousands of years.

In other climate news US scientists have also discovered that the polar ice caps currently are melting rapidly and that the sea level is rising at a rate of about 30 centimeters per century. If the current warming trend continues this will in years to come create huge threat to world's population that lives in coastal zones.

It is still impossible to predict future climate because of large number of different factors all of which need to be taken into account while making future climate predictions, not to mention that there is also a very complex interaction between these factors which makes future climate models even more difficult.

But science is at least trying, measuring, collecting various data and samples all in hope to provide world leaders with possible solutions that would halt the impact of climate change. Climate change is the biggest environmental threat of our time, an environmental threat that could even in the worst possible scenario threaten the existence of our future generations.