Christian Scienc Monitor: After a record loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean last year, the 2013 melt season has begun at the top of the world, with ice vanishing in April at a faster pace than it did this time last year.
Summer sea ice a key player in Earth's climate system and one whose decline is widely taken as a prominent sign of global warming has been shrinking in extent since satellites first started to build a consistent record of the ice in late 1978. Ice losses in 2007 set a melt-season record, only...