Victims of diminishing Arctic sea ice

Earth’s declining Arctic ice is without doubt one of the biggest casualties of climate change, the consequences of which are far reaching, from the plight of the iconic polar bear and other wildlife, to impacts to weather and climate systems that will be felt across the globe. The continuing loss of the world’s ice is frequently in the news and now research based on ice-thickness data from ESA’s CryoSat and Envisat missions along with a new model of snow has revealed that sea ice in the coastal regions of the Arctic may be thinning twice as fast as thought.