Arctic Sea Ice Hits New Low

It's official: The extent of summer sea ice across the Arctic has hit a historic low. Last Monday's announcement from the National Snow and IceData Center capped a summer of record-breaking extreme weather events fueled by manmade climate change, including 40,000 high-temperature records that have been broken in the United States this year. At this pace, the Arctic could be ice-free in the summer for a day or more by 2020. Animals like polar bears, ice seals and walruses, which rely on the sea ice to survive and raise young, are almost certain to face a higher death toll from starvation and drowning. 

And that's very bad news for people too. "The sea-ice death spiral, coming during one of the warmest summers in American history, is just one more clear sign of the deepening climate crisis that we ignore at our own peril," said Center for Biological Diversity Climate Science Director Shaye Wolf.

The good news: If we can drastically reduce emissions now, we can still lower our atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million and avoid climate catastrophe.

Read more in Wired and help spur the feds to action by signing the People's Petition to Get to 350 and making your city the next Clean Air City.