Cold reality: North Pole may be ice-free this summer

GLOBAL WARMING IMPACT: As Arctic sea ice is melted away, the North Pole may briefly be ice free.

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Suhasini Haidar

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The brief lack of ice at the top of the globe will not bring any immediate consequences.

"From the viewpoint of the science, the North Pole is just another point in the globe, but it does have this symbolic meaning," Serreze said. "There's suppose to be ice at the North Pole. The fact that we may not have any by the end of this summer could be quite a symbolic change."

Serreze said "it's just another indicator of the disappearing Arctic sea ice cover" but that the rate at which it’s happening is “astounding.”

"Five years ago, to think that we'd even be talking about the possibility of the North Pole melting out in the summer, I would have never thought it," he said.

The melting, however, has been long seen as inevitable, he said. "If you talked to me or other scientists just a few years ago, we were saying that we might lose all or most of the summer sea ice cover by anywhere from 2050 to 2100," Serreze said. "Then, recently, we kind of revised those estimates, maybe as early as 2030. Now, there are people out there saying it might be even before that. So, things are happening pretty quick up there."

Serreze highlighted all those who suggest the Arctic meltdown is just part of a historic cycle are wrong.

"It's not cyclical at this point. I think we understand the physics behind this pretty well," he said. "We've known for at least 30 years, from our earliest climate models, that it's the Arctic where we'd see the first signs of global warming. It's a situation where we hate to say we told you so, but we told you so," he said.

Serreze pointed the Arctic sea ice will not be the same for decades. "If we had a few cold years in a row, we could put sort of a temporary damper on it, but I think at this point going to an ice-free Arctic Ocean is inevitable," he said. "I don't think we can stop that now."

Reduced greenhouse gas emissions could "cool things down a bit," he said. "It would recover fairly quickly, but it's just not going to happen for a while," he said. "I think we're committed at this point."

There are some positive aspects to the ice melting, he said. Ships could use the Northwest Passage to save time and energy by no longer having to travel through the Panama Canal or around Cape Horn.

"There's also, or course, oil at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean," he said. "Now, the irony of that is kind of clear but the fact that we are opening up the Arctic Ocean does make it more accessible."

The US National Snow and Ice Data Center Web site — NSIDC.org — publishes a near-real-time image of the Arctic sea ice cover.