THE Arctic Ocean, the area of water around the North Pole, is the most informative part of the world in showing the results of climate change caused by our short sighted reliance on carbon rich fossil fuels. It’s floating pack ice in winter, and increasingly open water in summer.

Satellite measurements since 1970 show clear evidence that the global rate of temperature change is strongest closer to the North Pole, two to three times more than the world average. It’s certainly helped by the dark coloured ocean absorbing heat compared with the reflected energy from white snow and ice surfaces.

Since 1979 the sea ice has been decreasing by an annual average of 60,000 square kilometres, the size of Ireland, and the lowest extent of sea ice was in September 2012 when it was less than half the average from 1979-2000.

Similarly the amount of ice that exists over two or three winters is now seriously declining, allowing the younger, new ice to melt more rapidly.

September 2016 was the second lowest ice cover, by a whisker, and the recent Christmas extent, last November and December, is the lowest ever recorded for that time of the year.. This isn’t surprising as the air temperature in the polar regions has been 20 degrees C higher than normal for the season, and at the same time the sea has been 4 degrees warmer than expected.

Greenland, with its ice sheet that raises sea levels when it melts, after calving into icebergs, has a similar disappearing history, losing on average 500 billion tonnes of water each year. As expected sea level measurements world wide show that it’s rising, and at an accelerating rate.

Our future depends on what’s happening at the North Pole, and the change is far too rapid to be ignored any longer.