Washington, Sept 16 (ANI): University of Colorado Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Centre has revealed that the blanket of sea ice that floats on the Arctic Ocean appears to have reached its lowest extent for 2011, the second lowest recorded since satellites began measuring it in 1979.
The Arctic sea ice extent fell to 1.67 million square miles, or 4.33 million square kilometres on Sept. 9, 2011.
This year's minimum of 1.67 million square miles is more than 1 million square miles below the 1979-2000 monthly average extent for September - an area larger than Texas and California combined.
While this year's September minimum extent was greater than the all-time low in 2007, it remains significantly below the long-term average and well outside the range of natural climate variability, according to scientists involved in the analysis.
Most scientists believe the shrinking Arctic sea ice is linked to warming temperatures caused by an increase in human-produced greenhouse gases pumped into Earth's atmosphere.
CU-Boulder's NSIDC will issue a full analysis of the 2011 results and a comparison to previous years during the first week of October.(ANI)
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