North Pole sea ice may melt by 2040, researchers find

Boulder scientists worked on Arctic warming study

Global warming could melt summer Arctic sea ice by the end of the century, scientists say, making for an ice-free North Pole for the first time in more than a million years.

With no apparent natural mechanisms to maintain the summer sea ice, the question is no longer whether such melting could happen, but when and with what impacts, says a team of researchers led by University of Arizona professor Jonathan Overpeck. The group, which included two Boulder scientists, published its findings in this week’s Eos, the weekly newspaper of the American Geophysical Union.

The impacts will go well beyond Santa’s workshop needing pontoons. The Arctic plays a major role in the Earth’s climate system, and sea-ice cover drives much of its current behavior. When highly reflective ice melts, darker oceans and land absorb more heat, creating a positive feedback loop of melting.

"If we lose the sea ice in the summer, there will be strong downstream effects," said Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and one of the paper’s co-authors. "The Arctic is the heat sink of the Northern Hemisphere, and the equator the heat source. If we change the nature of that Arctic heat sink, we radically alter that system."

By Todd Neff, Camera Staff Writer

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