Aalok Mehta aboard the C.C.G.S. Amundsen, National Geographic News
June 20, 2008: “Arctic warming has become so dramatic that the North Pole may melt this summer, report scientists studying the effects of climate change in the field.

“We’re actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time [in history],” David Barber, of the University of Manitoba, told National Geographic News aboard the C.C.G.S. Amundsen, a Canadian research icebreaker…Firsthand observations and satellite images show that the immediate area around the geographic North Pole is now mostly annual, or first-year, ice—thin new ice that forms each year during the winter freeze…Recent models suggest that the Arctic won’t see its first completely ice-free summer until somewhere between 2013 and 2030.”

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