No Ice At North Pole This Summer
June 28, 2008
WASHINGTON (AFP) — There could briefly be no ice at the North Pole this summer, a US scientist said Friday, an event that would mark a new stage in the melting of the Arctic ice sheets due to global warming.
"We could have no ice at the North Pole at the end of this summer," Mark Serreze, a scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, told AFP in an interview.
"And the reason here is that the North Pole area right now is covered with very thin ice and this ice we call first-year ice, the ice that tends to melt out in the summer."
If the ice, albeit briefly, were to break up completely this summer it would be the first time this had happened in human history.
Serreze put the chances of this occurring at 50 percent -- if it does happen, in September "it's possible" that ships could sail from Alaska right to the North Pole.
Last summer, melting ice allowed ships through the Arctic's Northern Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans for longer than ever before.
Serreze pointed out that even if there were no ice left at the North Pole, there would be ice in other parts of the Arctic Ocean this summer.
But he recognized the symbolism of an ice-free North Pole in the minds of the public, and said it was yet another indication of the environmental changes taking place because of global warming.
"There should be ice at the North Pole, and there might not be at the end of the summer and that is telling that something is wrong," he said.
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