More bad news for the Arctic: the Laptev Sea hasn’t frozen
Yet another symptom of man-made climate change
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THE LAPTEV SEA, nestled between the north coast of Siberia and Russia’s New Siberian Islands, is known as the birthplace of ice. Every year, ice forms along its coasts in the autumn before being pushed west across the Arctic Ocean to Greenland and Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, where it breaks up come spring. Every year, that is, until this one. For the first time since records began, the Laptev Sea has not begun to freeze by late October (see chart). This is only the latest example of how climate change is rapidly transforming the Arctic. Scientists worry that it could have damaging knock-on effects across the region.
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