Melting ice, especially in Greenland and the Arctic, is also thought to contribute to global warming, Zwally said.
CNN: Ice melting across globe at accelerating rate, NASA says
In Greenland and the Arctic Ocean, December was comparatively balmy.
ECONOMIST: Britain��s cold snap is explained by the Arctic oscillation
Migratory caribou in low Arctic Greenland and elsewhere are declining in number as they have not been able to keep their calving season in synch with changes in plant growth.
Simulations were also used to extend the climate forcing results from central Greenland to the entire Arctic.
BBC: Human activities have left a visible mark on the Arctic
Already, average sea level rise has doubled in a decade due to the destabilisation of the Arctic and Greenland ice shelves.
Mining companies say there are many largely unexploited regions of the globe, including Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Mongolia and the entire seafloor.
Mr Prentice and his counterparts from other Arctic states met in Greenland this week, to discuss offshore drilling among other topics.
Very few scientists think Greenland would be stable in an Arctic with little or no summer sea-ice, and opinion is split as to whether it is past its tipping point already.
The United States, Norway, Russia and Greenland have all opened more of their Arctic offshore to exploration in recent years, leading to several big discoveries.
Yet there are fears that reckless exploitation of Greenland's minerals could endanger the pristine Arctic environment.
These are three of the five countries that border on the richest, and trickiest, prize of all, the Arctic (Denmark because it owns Greenland, unless and until the Greenlanders should become independent, as some wish).
Russia, the United States, Denmark, Greenland, Canada and Norway, which border the Arctic, and China are also scrambling to control the region and access to the commercial ventures there.
Mechanisms on the verge of being instigated include loss of Arctic sea ice, shrinkage of the Greenland ice sheet, loss of Antarctic ice shelves, and shrinkage of the Antarctic ice sheets.
From these simulations, the average impact from soot pollution over the Arctic was about double that found for central Greenland.
BBC: Human activities have left a visible mark on the Arctic
Ways of life have been thrown into flux in Greenland as sea ice thaws and new shipping routes into the Arctic open up.
Most of Greenland is covered by an ice cap, but the acceleration of Arctic melting is making it easier to tap the territory's resources.
I'm writing this blog from Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland, where a cold katabatic wind is blowing off the ice onto the deck of the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise.
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