While many climate scientists greeted with cautious optimism this summer's failure to set a new arctic ice retreat record, hopes for a significant slowing in the pace of arctic habitat degradation may have been dashed by a new British study.

Using satellite data from the new "Green eye" system, the study found that average ice thicknesses in the northern Polar region had been decimated by recent increases in global temperature. Even against the average for the abnormally warm 2002-2008 time period, Arctic ice thicknesses this past summer were nearly a foot below average. Despite the magnitude of this plunge, localized thickness losses were even higher, exceeding 36 inches in western areas of the ice sheet.

While historical data has relied on simple satellite photos, meaning that recessions of ice could be attributed to ice congealing along coastlines instead of the open ocean, thickness measurements are unequivocally the result of heat-induced melting.

The news should serve as yet another irrefutable alarm that the effects of global warming are being felt in the here and now. Indeed, projections for the complete disappearance of the Arctic ice sheet, aimed at 2080 as recently as 2003, are now being scaled drastically forward, to as soon as 2030.