A Farewell to Ice: A Report from the Arctic

Based on five decades of research and observation, a haunting and unsparing look at the melting ice caps, and what their disappearance will mean.

Peter Wadhams has been studying ice first-hand since 1970, completing 50 trips to the world's poles and observing for himself the changes over the course of nearly five decades. His conclusions are stark: the ice caps are melting. Following the hottest summer on record, sea ice in September 2016 was the thinnest in recorded history. There is now the probability that within a few years the North Pole will be ice-free for the first time in 10,000 years, entering what some call the "Artic death spiral." As sea ice, as well as land ice on Greenland and Antarctica, continues to melt, the rise in sea levels will devastate coastal communities across the world. The collapse of summer ice in the Artic will release large amounts of methane currently trapped by offshore permafrost. Methane has twenty-three times greater greenhouse warming effect per molecule than CO2; an ice-free arctic summer will therefore have an albedo effect nearly equivalent to that of the last thirty years.

A sobering but urgent and engaging book, A Farewell to Ice shows us ice's role on our planet, its history, and the true dimensions of the current global crisis, offering readers concrete advice about what they can do, and what must be done.


Author: Peter Wadhams
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 09/05/2017
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.50w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9780190691158

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 06/26/2017
Foreword 06/29/2017
Shelf Awareness 09/19/2017
Library Journal 10/01/2017
Choice 04/01/2018

About the Author
Peter Wadhams is Professor of Ocean Physics and Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University. He has completed over fifty research trips to the arctic.