Climate Safety
The annual summer warming of the Arctic in 2008 was watched closely by an army of
expert observers and other interested parties around the world. Organisations such as
the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)3 published neardaily
updates on the state of the Arctic sea ice, which every year recedes from its winter
maximum as the summer comes to the far north. The reason for this scrutiny was the
record low level of Arctic sea ice extent observed in summer 2007, when an area of ice
nearly the size of Alaska melted. The modern Arctic is a very different place to the Arctic of
the past....
