Local communities have been noticing profound changes in the Arctic sea ice environment for several decades.
This past summer, the Arctic sea ice dwindled to its second lowest level.
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The Arctic sea ice area is expected to continue decreasing until September.
Each year, the Arctic sea ice reaches its minimum extent in September.
Charles pointed out that mankind had caused the Arctic sea ice to thin and rainforests to shrink by a third since the 1950s.
Ann Daniels from Whimple and Pen Hadow from Dartmoor will be studying the Arctic sea ice to help scientists understand more about climate change.
The Arctic sea ice is constantly moving, breaking open and reforming into different shapes - which means we can end up moving several kilometres in any direction while we are asleep in our tents.
The rapid melting of the Arctic sea ice, then, illuminates the difficulty of modelling the climate but not in a way that brings much comfort to those who hope that fears about the future climate might prove exaggerated.
Thanks to data collected and disseminated by the Arctic Regional Ocean Observing System (Arctic ROOS) and by national observing efforts, information about the extent of the Arctic sea ice is reported every few days, providing an early warning of changing conditions in the Arctic Ocean.
The best hope lies in trying to identify the broader changes under way - for example with the retreat of the Arctic sea-ice or the cycle of warming in the Pacific Ocean with El Nino and La Nina.
"This suggests that current model projections may in fact provide a conservative estimate of future Arctic change, and that the summer Arctic sea ice may disappear considerably earlier than IPCC projections, " said NSIDC's Julienne Stroeve who led the study.
As far as current global observations are concerned, Hansen cites both the decline of Arctic sea ice and the worldwide retreat of mountain glaciers as causes for major concern.
One-hundred-and-two holes have been dug so far and 1, 100 measurements have been made of ice thickness, snow density and other features - data deemed vital by scientists evaluating the future of the Arctic sea-ice.
For instance, sea ice is predicted to increasingly shrink as a result of climate change: the late-summer Arctic sea ice may vanish almost entirely by the middle of the century, triggering unprecedented maritime challenges, with an increase in shipping and oil and gas exploration in high-latitude waters previously covered in ice.
The amount of the Arctic covered by sea ice fell in late August to the lowest point since satellite observations began in 1979, the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported.
Mechanisms on the verge of being instigated include loss of Arctic sea ice, shrinkage of the Greenland ice sheet, loss of Antarctic ice shelves, and shrinkage of the Antarctic ice sheets.
Loss of ice in the Arctic, and in particular the extensive sea-ice, has global implications.
The extent of Arctic sea ice extent fell to 4.10 million square kilometers on August 26, 2012.
The loss of Arctic sea ice is "big news", according to University of Alaska, Fairbanks, researcher Larry Hinzman.
"The time when Arctic sea ice is going to disappear is open to a lot of debate, " he said.
Compared to September conditions in the 1980s and 1990s, this represents a 45 percent reduction in the area of the Arctic covered by sea ice.
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In the past decade, Arctic sea ice volumes have declined 36% during autumn and 9% during the winter, according to findings to be published in Geophysical Research Letters.
And in February 2009 it was discovered that scientists had previously been underestimating the re-growth of Arctic sea ice by an area larger than the state of California (twice as large as New Zealand).
The year also saw Arctic sea ice hit a record low in more than 30 years of satellite observations and studies that found the world's major ice sheets have been shrinking at an increasing rate.
In the Lords (from 2.30pm) questions from peers range across the record-low sea ice extent in the Arctic Ocean during the past year and the likely future of oil prices , before peers continue the marathon committee stage consideration of the Growth and Infrastructure Bill.
Added to the general atmospheric warming in the region, the researchers also describe an amplification process whereby reduced snow cover on the surrounding tundra and less sea-ice in the Arctic Ocean push up temperatures still further.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported in early March that 2011 has tied with 2006 for the record low sea-ice coverage in the Arctic Ocean (in the satellite record).
Martin Sommerkorn from the WWF International Arctic Program believes that the changes in sea-ice cover in the region are likely to increase global temperatures further.
Cryosat-2 will measure very precisely the rates of change of sea and land ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic.
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