Warmist Peter Wadhams on Arctic ice: "If you extrapolate, it means it could disappear completely for a month or two in summer by 2016. Certainly it is going to go sooner rather than later"

Arctic wilderness faces pollution threats as oil and gas giants target its riches | World news | The Observer

Peter Wadhams, a professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge, believes that it will take much less time. "I think it could be gone in summer in four years. It sounds unlikely but that is what the figures indicate," he told the Observer from Longyearbyen, in Svalbard, in Norway's northern Arctic archipelago.

Wadhams has just completed a study of ice thickness. Using robot submarines, he has made detailed measurements of the depths of ice sheets, while aircraft have surveyed the heights of these floes. "Our work indicates that Arctic ice has lost 70% of its volume in the past 30 years thanks to global warming. If you extrapolate, it means it could disappear completely for a month or two in summer by 2016. Certainly it is going to go sooner rather than later."

The consequences for the planet will be grim. Without the white brilliance of the ice to reflect sunlight back into space, it will warm even more. Seabed temperatures will rise and methane deposits will melt, evaporate and bubble into the atmosphere. "We can already see plumes appearing in many areas," said Wadhams. "Given that methane is a particularly powerful greenhouse gas, that again will accelerate global warming."