Receding ice caps, rising sea levels and increasing ocean temperatures have forced international businesses and governments to rethink the role of the Arctic Ocean in the modern world, earth sciences professor Meredith Kelly and environmental studies professor Ross Virginia said in a lecture held in the Haldeman Center on Tuesday.

At the event, “Polar Environmental Trends and Their Policy Implications,” Kelly said that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report, released in 2007, underestimated the rates of change recorded for Earth’s rising sea levels and water temperatures...

...Thayer School of Engineering professor Donald Perovich said that instead of focusing on predictions about when the last pieces of ice will melt, people should instead realize that the ice has already melted to a point where human activity is impacted. Specifically, humans will be threatened as huge sources of methane, a greenhouse gas that is more potent than carbon dioxide, are unearthed and released because of the melting ice.