Arctic Summers Ice-free by 2013

Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice. Their latest modeling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years. Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss. Summer melting this year reduced the ice cover to 4.13 million square km, the smallest ever extent in modern times. Remarkably, this stunning low point was not even incorporated into the model runs of the Professor and his team, which used data sets from 1979 to 2004 to constrain their future projections.