This morning at the Vancouver Maritime Museum, Vancouver Centre NDP candidate Michael Byers gave a graphic description of the extent of the melting of the polar ice cap.

He focused a great deal of attention to his trip through the Northwest Passage in 2006.

“Climate change is causing the ice conditions to change at a phenomenal rate, so that in the course of my lifetime—42 years—we have lost over 40 percent of the extent of the Arctic Sea ice cover,” Byers said.

He added that the remaining ice has thinned by 40 percent.

Byers, a UBC political scientist, attributed this to the thickening blanket of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is causing air temperatures to increase.

He noted that as the ice melts, the dark ocean water absorbs solar heat, whereas this heat is reflected off ice. He also said that stronger polar winds from Siberia are sweeping across the north pole, and pushing ice into the Atlantic Ocean in winter months, where it hits the Gulf Stream and melts.

“In fact, this past winter, there was an enormous amount of multiyear ice that got flushed out and disappeared,” Byers said. “We’re getting stronger currents coming through the Bering Strait from the Pacific, bringing warmer water, which in turn is melting more of the ice from below.”

On September 16, the U.S.-based National Snow and Ice Data Centre reported that this month, Arctic sea ice dropped to 4.52 million square kilometers, which is the second lowest recorded amount since 1979. The lowest occurred last year.

This year’s figure, which occurred on September 12, is 2.24 million square kilometers below the average minimum recorded between 1979 and 2000, according to the NSIDC, which is at the University of Colorado Boulder.