New Challenges from the Top of the World (TWO of TWO) Fossil fuel emissions caused the melting of Arctic ice. Now the Arctic in turn is accelerating global warming instead of cooling the planet because the disappearance or thinning of the ice sheet in the Arctic summer has many serious consequences.
This ice sheet covered the top of the world and touched the coast lines of Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Siberia for 100.000 years. In only 30 years the retreat from the coast lines during the Arctic summer accelerated and an ice free Arctic in September may occur by 2020. And the Arctic winter is no longer cold enough to restore ice levels.
In this extraordinary comprehensive lecture that Prof. Wadhams gave in Milano, Italy, in May 2025, he lists seven major areas in which the Arctic influences climate change. In the previous program by TUC Radio Wadhams explained the consequences of the shrinking and thinning sea ice.
In this program (Part TWO) Wadhams explains the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, the loss of snow, the multi-national study on the recent discovery of methane releases from permafrost and shallow water, the link between sea ice loss and extreme weather events, and the deflections of two great global air and water currents, the Jet stream and the thermo-haline circulation.
Prof. Peter Wadhams is the UK’s most experienced sea ice scientist and was Director of the Scott Polar Institute in Cambridge from 1987 to 1992 and Professor of Ocean Physics at Cambridge from 1992 to 2015. He has made more than 50 expeditions to both polar regions. His most recent book is A Farewell to Ice.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)
