Arctic Ocean may become ice free

TUCSON, Aug. 23 (UPI) -- The Arctic Ocean may reportedly become seasonally ice-free for the first time in more than a million years if the current warming trends are not halted.

If the melting of Arctic glaciers and ice sheets is not stopped, geoscientists say it will raise sea level worldwide, flooding coastal areas where many of the world's people live.

Melting sea ice has already resulted in dramatic impacts for the animals and indigenous people of the Arctic region, which includes parts of Alaska, Canada, Russia, Siberia, Scandinavia and Greenland.

"What really makes the Arctic different from the rest of the non-polar world is the permanent ice in the ground, in the ocean and on land," said lead author Jonathan Overpeck, a University of Arizona geoscientist. "We see all of that ice melting already, and we envision it will melt ... much more dramatically in the future as we move towards this more permanent ice-free state."

The report appears in the Aug. 23 issue of Eos, the weekly newspaper of the American Geophysical Union.