Arctic ice, according to an expert, is melting at faster than expected, and this could put the Earth in a bad situation.
As predicted by an Arctic ice expert from the Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, Dr. Peter Wadhams, the sea ice could be gone in just two years.
The sea ice reflects the sun's light and heat away from the Earth. With the ice's bright surface, the rays from the sun bounce back to space instead of being absorbed and trapped in the planet. The ocean's exposed dark surface when the ice melt may absorb 90 percent of the incoming heat, while the ice reflects 80 percent back to space, International Business Times reported.
The sea ice is consistently melting and there is no sign that it will stop, based on the current tracking. NASA released a data showing that this year's August was the hottest August since they started tracking, and it tied July as the hottest month they have ever recorded, as reported by Alternet.
However, Wadhams is not confident about his prediction that the Arctic sea ice will be gone by 2017 or 2018. While the ice is consistently melting, he believes that something could still happen to change or stop the ice from melting.
NASA provided a data earlier this year showing that the winter in the Arctic sea ice extent had hit a record low. The sea ice is rapidly melting until May but it slowed just enough not to break the sea ice's minimum record during the previous summertime.
On the other hand, Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland stated that the Arctic ice is not showing any recovery. Wadhams warns that if this continues, the Earth will look quite different within two years.
