Ice-Free Arctic?

The Arctic icecap, covering some 3,000,000 square miles from Greenland to Northeastern Siberia, is the source of cold winds and ocean currents that affect the climate of the northern hemisphere. Last week Edward L. Gorton Jr. of the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office released the first results of a continuing analysis of the polar wasteland.

Navy oceanographers found that one-tenth of the ice melts each summer, and the ice layer's thickness is reduced to two or three meters. At present, the pack contains only 6,500 cubic miles of ice (barely enough to cover the state of Texas with a 125-ft. layer), and it is steadily shrinking. Since 1900, the thickness of the polar icecap has decreased by three feet because of higher general temperatures.

If the trend continues, predicts Gorton, the Arctic Ocean will eventually lose its permanent ice, freezing only in winter; at that point, none of the ice will reach the hard-core polar stage. The Navy's tentative long-range forecast: "Great changes in climate will take place. This change . . . may foreshadow the end of the current ice age, but no timetable is set for this development."

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