Bering Sea winter ice shrank to its lowest level in 5,500 years in 2018
Sea ice in the Bering Sea, on the southern margin of the Arctic Ocean, dwindled to its smallest wintertime expanse in 5,500 years in 2018, new data show. Summertime sea ice loss due to climate change has captured headlines, but winter ice in the region has also shown recent signs of decline. In both February 2018 and February 2019, the extent was 60 to 70 percent lower than the average February-to-May extent from 1979 to 2017. However, researchers thought that those declines might be linked to unusual short-term atmospheric conditions. Instead, the new study suggests that human-caused climate change is also helping to shrink Bering Sea ice during the winter. The findings, by geologist Miriam Jones of the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va., and colleagues, were published September 2 in Science Advances. Jones and her team collected cores of peat from St. Matthew Island, a remote spot in the Bering Sea...