Artic Summer Ice Nearing End, Say Climate Change Scientists

Arctic summer sea ice -- the frozen pack that lingers through the Northern Hemisphere summer -- will have completely melted away by 2050, two federal government scientists who work on climate change say. 

The announcement was made in an article published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warn that major sea ice loss could come within a decade or two. They also say that some blobs of ice might remain here and there, especially near Greenland and Canada's Arctic islands.

Scientists always knew that the arctic ice was melting, but they never reckoned with it happening this fast.

Using three methods to predicting the sea-ice trends in the Arctic Ocean, the federal researchers estimate that from 2020 to 2060 most ice will be gone during the Northern Hemisphere's warmest months.

According to a paper on climate change by James Overland and Muyin Wang, things are going faster than previously thought.

"Results show very likely timing for future sea ice loss to the first half of the 21st century, with a possibility of major loss within a decade or two," they wrote in their article on climate change and the Arctic. "The large observed shifts in the current Arctic environment represent major indicators of regional and global climate change."

According to the scientists, the Arctic Ocean has experienced exponential loss of thick, multi-year sea ice in the past 12 years, and the amount was less than half the average of 1979-2000 last September.

This is another research of a series of articles on the impact of Earth's soaring temperatures. 2012 was one of the world's 10 warmest on record going back to 1880, the 36th consecutive year to exceed the 20th-century average of 57 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a separate NOAA report in January. For the United States, 2012 was the warmest in the records since 1895.