@SciencePassion: Arctic's Icy Coastlines Retreat as Planet Warms

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Arctic's Icy Coastlines Retreat as Planet Warms: The Arctic coastline is eroding nearly 2 feet per year on avera... http://bit.ly/ekwfSR

http://www.livescience.com/

Article:

Arctic's Icy Coastlines Retreat as Planet Warms

Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer

In the high latitudes, climate change projections must take a new factor into account: Ice. In the Arctic, the loss of sea ice is likely to have dramatic repercussions, including greater erosion, which can present problems for the people and economic activity in this region, according to two new reports.

Sea ice is disappearing from Arctic waters at an unprecedented rate — more rapidly than predicted by the most extreme projections in the most recent assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to the researchers. [Image of eroding coastline]

The rapid decline — 2010 had the third smallest summer ice cover of the past 30 years — suggests that human-caused climate change is being augmented by natural fluctuations, said Volker Rachold, a researcher with the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany who contributed to two recent reports on the Arctic coastline. "Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain the rapid loss of sea ice we are seeing at the moment," Rachold said.