Recently, the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory hosted 150 students from the local Richmond Middle School to kick-off the annual Adopt-A-Buoy program in which researchers interact with students to learn more about the Arctic and their own environment. In the photo, Dr. Don Perovich explains to the students how extensive the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice extent has changed – from September 1980 having 7.8 million square kilometers of coverage to September 2012 and 3.4 million square kilometers, which indicates a huge decrease in ice extent. Data shows that the Arctic Ocean’s ice sheet is losing both area and thickness.