Scientists divided on why Arctic ice is failing to grow again

For the second year in a row, the cloak of sea ice on the Arctic Ocean failed to grow to its normal winter expanse, scientists said. The finding led some climate experts to predict a record expansion of open water this coming summer.

“We keep looking for the ice to recover, but it isn’t,” said Mark Serreze, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., which monitors the region using satellites. “Unless conditions turn unusually cold this spring and summer, we may be looking at sea ice losses in 2006 that will rival what we saw in 2005.”

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