Ice-Free Summers in the Arctic Coming Sooner Than Previously Expected

Last year the ice in the Arctic shrank to the lowest level in recorded history. While it looks like that record won't be broken this summer, a period where there is literally no ice in the Arctic isn't that far off. In fact, it's likely to happen sooner than previously expected, according to NASA glaciologists.

The Arctic - the area surrounding the North Pole, north of the Arctic Circle that normally experiences long, cold winters and short, cool summers where the average temperature never gets above around 50 degrees Fahrenheit - experienced the biggest loss of ice ever recorded last summer. And it is losing about 30,000 square miles of sea ice a year, according to LiveScience. That's roughly an amount of ice equivalent to the state of Maine.

And while this summer's ice loss is not as extreme as last year's, the trend is still troubling scientists at NASA. According to Walt Meier, a glaciologist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., while the ice melt "is not going to be as extreme as last year," scientists that keep track of ice levels in the northern-most region of Earth are "still seeing a strong downward trend ... at levels that are much lower than average."

What does the downward trend mean? "In the 1980s, the Arctic sea ice at the end of the summer was about the size of the lower 48 U.S. states," Meir told LiveScience. "If you imagine taking a road trip across the sea ice - say you want to go from Los Angeles to New York - you could have driven on the sea ice the whole way." Now the summer ice loss is the equivalent of losing everything in the continental U.S. on one side of the Mississippi river.

The trend is such that the ice-free summers, which were originally predicted to occur at the end of the 21^st century, are more likely to happen much earlier. "Now, it's really looking pretty likely," said Meier, "that it could come mid-century at the latest, and perhaps even within the next couple of decades."

Of course, the Arctic is one of the most sensitive regions to climate change, and the consequences of the ice cover shrinking so drastically are immense. One of the feedback loops that the Arctic provides the climate is a cover of white, reflective ice. While the white ice absorbs very little heat from the sun, instead reflecting it back, an ice-free Arctic ocean absorbs much more energy, speeding up the polar warming.

According to Tom Wagner, manager of the Cryosphere program at NASA, "Polar regions tend to heat up faster than the rest of the planet." Another part of the problem is that, according to Wagner, "The Arctic also has massive stores of methane in the permafrost and sea bed. As we lose the sea ice, we have more heat going into the ocean, causing more permafrost to die, which can destabilize the sea bed and trip the release of this methane, which could cause spikes in temperature." Methane is one of the most harmful greenhouse gasses - more harmful per volume than Carbon Dioxide.

Because of these feedback loops, the already faster-than-previously-expected warming of the Arctic could kick into an even higher gear. Meaning that if you're a relatively young person, you might prepare yourself to expect an ice-free Arctic summer in your lifetime.