GIF: National Geographic
Heeelllp us… we’re meeelllting — literally. In response to President Barack Obama unveiling the Clean Power Plan a little while back, National Geographic had one thing to say: “Yes, Mr. President, we remade our atlas to reflect shrinking ice.”
The headline and subsequent piece alluded to a specific passage during his announcement.
“Shrinking ice caps forced National Geographic to make the biggest change in its atlas since the Soviet Union broke apart,” Obama said.
Not only is the President correct, but it’s only getting worse.
“The end of Arctic summer is still several weeks away, and it’s still too early to say if another record will be broken,”National Geographic Geographer Juan José Valdés told online natural history editor Christine Dell’Amore. “But one need only look at the maps derived from satellite imagery to see the impact of global warming.”
Yep, this year’s freeze cycle SUCKED.
“As the ocean heats up due to global warming,” Dell’Amore continues. “Arctic sea ice has been locked in a downward spiral. Since the late 1970s, the ice has retreated by 12 percent per decade, worsening after 2007, according to NASA. May 2014 represented the third lowest extent of sea ice during that month in the satellite record, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).”
Last year, National Geographic produced a video speaking to this downward spiral in anticipation then soon-to-be-published Atlas of the World, tenth edition, which would show “the most dramatic change in Arctic ice since the 1963 publication of the first edition.”
Read the entire story on National Geographic.
