Firsthand observations and satellite images show that the immediate area around the geographic North Pole is now mostly annual, or first-year, ice—thin new ice that forms each year during the winter freeze.
Such ice is much more prone to melting during the summer months than perennial, or multiyear, ice, which is thick and dense ice that has lasted through multiple cycles of thawing and refreezing.
"I would say the ice in the vicinity of the North Pole is primed for melting, and an ice-free North Pole is a good possibility," Sheldon Drobot, a climatologist at the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research at the University of Colorado, said by email.
The melt would be mostly symbolic—thicker ice, pushed against the Canadian continental shelf by weather and Earth's rotation, would still survive the summer.
Recent models suggest that the Arctic won't see its first completely ice-free summer until somewhere between 2013 and 2030.
But this summer's forecast—and unusual early melting events all around the Arctic—serve as a dire warning of how quickly the polar regions are being affected by climate change.
Such ice is much more prone to melting during the summer months than perennial, or multiyear, ice, which is thick and dense ice that has lasted through multiple cycles of thawing and refreezing.
"I would say the ice in the vicinity of the North Pole is primed for melting, and an ice-free North Pole is a good possibility," Sheldon Drobot, a climatologist at the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research at the University of Colorado, said by email.
The melt would be mostly symbolic—thicker ice, pushed against the Canadian continental shelf by weather and Earth's rotation, would still survive the summer.
Recent models suggest that the Arctic won't see its first completely ice-free summer until somewhere between 2013 and 2030.
But this summer's forecast—and unusual early melting events all around the Arctic—serve as a dire warning of how quickly the polar regions are being affected by climate change.
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- RE34890
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- added June 22, 2008
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