' the North Pole will be completely free of ice in the summertime within the lifetime of a child born today. '

Rapidly shrinking Arctic ice could spell trouble for the rest of the world

By Robert S. Boyd
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Alarmed by an accelerating loss of ice in the Arctic Ocean, scientists are striving to understand why the speedup is happening and what it means for humankind.

If present trends continue, as seems likely, the sea surrounding the North Pole will be completely free of ice in the summertime within the lifetime of a child born today. The loss could point the way to radical changes in the Earth's climate and weather systems.

Some researchers, such as Ron Lindsay, an Arctic scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, fear that the polar region already may have passed a "tipping point" from which it can't recover in the foreseeable future.

Others, such as Jonathan Overpeck, the director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona in Tucson, think the Arctic ice pack is nearing a point of no return but hasn't reached it yet.
The National Science Foundation, a congressionally chartered agency, last month announced an urgent research program to determine what "these changes mean for both the Arctic and the Earth."

"The pace of Arctic change has accelerated," the foundation declared. "Because of the Arctic's pivotal role in the Earth's climate, it is critical - perhaps urgent - that we understand this system in light of abundant evidence that a set of linked and pervasive changes are under way."

The concern has heightened because last summer brought a record low in the size of the northern ice pack. "The degree of retreat was greater than ever before," said Ted Scambos, chief scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. Previous lows were set in 2002, 2003 and 2004.

Since 1980, satellite observations taken each September, the warmest month of the year in the Arctic, show that the ice cover has been shrinking by an average of almost 8 percent a year. During that time, the polar ocean lost 540,000 square miles of ice - an area twice the size of Texas, Scambos said.

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--Ohh. Crap.==