The Arctic ice cap reached a new low a year ago. In just six months, 4.5 million square miles of Arctic Ocean ice melted, according to a 2012 report by the United Nations.
While that may be hard to imagine, the commanding officer of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star says Arctic ice was the lowest he’s ever seen in all his ice breaking trips to the region.
After three years in a shipyard and a $90 million makeover, the Coast Guard’s heavy ice breaker just returned from trials in the Beaufort Sea and made a brief stop in Juneau.
Rosemarie Alexander is a reporter at KTOO in Juneau.
