India is huge. It's the seventh-largest country on Earth. At 1.27 million square miles, the geographic area of India is hard to even fathom, and scientists say that number is roughly how much of the polar ice caps have vanished this year.
According to CBS News, climatologists are measuring sea ice levels in both the Arctic and Antarctica at record lows for this time of year. Sea ice is currently 1.48 million square miles below the average level between 1981 and 2010. Melting ice leads to rising sea levels that can endanger coastal areas. That includes cities like Miami, where flooding has grown steadily more common, intense, and widespread—and even landed sea creatures in residential parking garages.
Today's news is in line with last month's, which showed severe losses in Arctic sea ice and North Pole temperatures as much as 36 degrees above normal. Part of this is due to El Nino, the periodic weather event that creates warmer waters in the Pacific Ocean. But a major part of it, according to the scientific experts who have spent years studying the phenomenon, is due to man-made climate change.
Anders Levermann, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told Reuters that these latest readings are "an extraordinary departure from the norm." Mark Serreze, director of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, described the ice loss—which is also equivalent in size to two Alaskas—as "some really crazy things going on."
This is all particularly alarming with the election of Donald Trump, who has called climate change a "hoax" orchestrated by the Chinese, pledged to re-energize even the dirtiest fuels (like coal), and threatened to cancel the United States' commitment to the Paris Climate Accords. Trump softened his stance in an interview with The New York Times, but also appointed a number of climate-change deniers and fossil fuel champions to his transition team.
In yet another swing, though, Trump met with Nobel Prize-winning climate activist Al Gore Monday. Gore called that meeting with the president-elect and his daughter, Ivanka, "lengthy and very productive," and described a "sincere search for areas of common ground." Politico said Ivanka Trump is interested in taking the mantle as her father's "climate czar," and Gore may well have gained as much or more encouragement from her during the meeting.
Afterwards, Gore met reporters and described climate change as a graver threat than Trump's victory—despite the apparent connection between the two. "We don't have time to lick our wounds," he said, "to hope for a different election outcome." He continued:
"I'm encouraged that there are groups that are digging in to work even harder. Those groups working in the courts are even more important now; those organizing on campuses are even more important now. We have to win this struggle and we will win it; the only question is how fast we win. But more damage is baked into the climate system every day, so it's a race against time."
Let's hope he's right. Otherwise, everything might be about to slow down—except the chunks of ice falling into the sea, and the water pouring into the streets of Miami Beach.