Surf's Up in the Arctic: Record-High Waves Seen in 2012

 

Record-high waves hit Alaska's Beaufort Sea in September 2012, when Arctic sea ice shrank to an extreme summer low, a new study reports.
The study authors blame shrinking Arctic sea ice for the house-size swells, and predict that waves will grow larger as the Arctic ice pack melts further in future decades.
"We have long known that waves are the combined results of winds, time and distance," said lead study author Jim Thomson, an oceanographer with the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory in Seattle. "In the Arctic Ocean, those distances are changing dramatically, and ...more