Arctic Will Soon Be Free From Ice, Experts Say

Change is inevitable, but global warming and climate change are transforming the Earth's landscape in a very rapid phase, causing panic worldwide.

Experts say that the Arctic sea ice is melting quite faster than expected and it can affect not just the region, but Earth in general. A scientist even says that next year, or maybe the year after that, the Arctic will be free of ice.

Peter Wadhams, a scientist, boldly said that the sea ice in the Arctic can vanish soon due to global warming. Wadhams' research in the North pole and the Arctic ocean identified that the former icecap the covered almost the entirety of the Arctic ocean is already beginning to melt and shrink in a rapid phase.

Wadhams added that the melting trend led to his statement.

"Most people expect this year will see a record low in the Arctic's summer sea-ice cover. Next year or the year after that, I think it will be free of ice in summer and by that I mean the central Arctic will be ice-free," Peter Wadhams, director of the Scott Polar Institute in Cambridge, said in an interview with the Guardian. "You will be able to cross over the North Pole by ship," Wadhams added.

He strongly believes that although packs of ice will remain, the Arctic basin may be free of sea ice in the next two years starting in the summer of 2017.

Wadhams' study says that melting sea ice will have a great impact on the planet since the sea ice is more capable of reflecting sunlight compared to water that can only deflect 10 percent of radiation. Once the sea ice melted, the water can only reflect a small amount of radiation. This means that the Earth will receive and absorb more sunlight and radiation making the planet even hotter.

The year 2016 has already broken records of the hottest temperature ever recorded and the trend doesn't seem to show any decrease in global warming.

"It doesn't look like the ice is healing or growing back," tom Wagner, NASA's manager for cryosphere research said in a statement.

Like Wadhams, scientists and researchers all over the world are lobbying to educate the people to help alleviate global warming that has already changed the planet's landscape.