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>>Interviewer: As we enter the dog

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days of summer in the United States, things are heating up even more farther north

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with melting Arctic sea ice, and here to join us from NASA's Goddard Space Flight 

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Center in Greenbelt, Maryland is Dr. Tom Wagner. Thank you for joining us. 

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>>Tom: Hey, thank you for having me. >>Interviewer: So the Arctic is losing sea ice at a faster 

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rate in recent years. How are things looking this year, and what are we seeing in the 

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long-term trend? >>Tom: Well the good news is we aren't set to see another record 

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low as we have been in the last few years. But the bad news is we're still set

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to see one of the lowest sea ice extents on record, and the ice is about as thin as it's been. 

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If you go back to the 1980s when the satellite record really starts, 

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we've lost almost two thirds of the volume of sea ice that used to be there. And that's 

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important because it's a really important part of the Earth's system. >>Interviewer: Why are we

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seeing these changes in the Arctic? >>Tom: The simple answer is this - the planet is

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warming up, but the Arctic because of various reasons warms about twice as 

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fast as the rest of the globe. The heat gets concentrated up there. And that's

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causing us to lose sea ice and also lose ice from all the glaciers around the Arctic. One of the

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most important changes is that as the ice recedes, water

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is a darker color so it absorbs more of that incoming sunlight. 

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One of the ways I like to think about it, the Arctic sea ice is kind of like a mirrored hat

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on the top of the planet and we're taking that hat off. >>Interviewer: What is 

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NASA doing to understand these changes? >>Tom: So NASA does a couple of different things. 

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You know the first thing is we study the Arctic with satellites, and you need satellites to

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do it, because the scales we're talking about are continent-level. 

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And we use satellites like ICESat, which has lasers that go down and bounce off the surface

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and tell us how high or how thick the ice is. We use satellites like Terra 

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and Aqua, which take really precise pictures of the Arctic, and also things

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that tell us about the temperature change in the Arctic. And we have this whole myriad of other 

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satellites that tell us about the composition of the atmosphere and the characteristics of the clouds. 

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But on top of that, NASA's kind of a leading agency for aircraft 

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studies of the Earth. And we have some major missions like IceBridge and ARISE

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which is going out this fall. We take aircraft that are literally festooned with 

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instruments to study the Arctic. >>Interviewer: How will these changes affect the

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United States? >>Tom: So the changes in the Arctic are probably already affecting 

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the US, but that's kind of a cutting edge of the research. Some people say that

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storm tracks, like Hurricane Sandy, may have been altered because of Arctic change. But we 

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also know that general precipitation patterns of things are probably changed as things like 

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the jet stream changes along with Arctic, and also larger-scale 

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fluctuations in the Earth's atmosphere and the climate. >>Interviewer: Where can we learn more? 

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>>Tom: One of the easiest places to go to is NASA.gov. 

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>>Interviewer: Dr. Tom Wagner, thank you very much for joining us. 

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>>Tom: Thank you for having me. 

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[beep beep... beep beep... beep beep...]

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