
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 28, 1990                   TAG: 9006280002
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Short

SHRINKING ICE RAISES QUESTION OF WARMING

A Nevada-size area of the Arctic lost about 15 percent of its ice in 11 years, showing the region should be better monitored for signs of global warming, a study suggests.

The decline is large for an area where scientists had thought the ice was consistently thick, said researcher Peter Wadhams. But it is impossible to know whether global warming played any role, he said.

Wadhams, of the University of Cambridge in England, presents his Arctic ice study in today's issue of the British journal Nature.

Using data from submarine-based studies in 1976 and 1987, Wadhams calculated changes within a 112,000-square-mile triangle north of Greenland.

He found that average thickness dropped from 17.5 feet in 1976 to 14.9 feet in 1987. Over the study area, that corresponds to a loss of nearly 55 cubic miles of ice, he said.

by CNB