Bye-Bye Sea Ice

A new study by scientists shows that sea-ice coverage of the Arctic Ocean will decline significantly over the next four decades, confirming other research.

The loss of habitat is expected to threaten polar bears, which depend on sea ice as a hunting platform.

Ice is effective at reflecting the sun’s rays, so less ice means more dark water, which absorbs solar energy, creating a snowball effect of further warming.

NOAA researchers relied on computer models that closely match the sea-ice extent from 1979 to 1999 to determine just how much ice would be lost by the year 2050. Their conclusions, to be published in the September issue of Geophysical Research Letters, project a summer sea ice decline of 40 percent throughout the Arctic Ocean region north of Alaska, Canada and Asia. Sea ice loss is also expected during winter in the ice zones of the more southern Bering and Barent seas, as well as the Sea of Okhotsk.

Other studies have predicted that the Arctic could be ice-free in summers in a few decades.

"These seasonal ice zones have large variability on annual and decadal time scales,” said Muyin Wang, a meteorologist at NOAA’s Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean at the University of Washington in Seattle. "Projections of sea ice are important as there will be impacts on humans and other ecosystem components.”

—LiveScience Staff

VIDEO: Animation Showing Loss of Arctic Sea Ice
VIDEO: See the Effects of Ice Loss
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Credit: NOAA