Study: Most Arctic sea ice could disappear by 2040

A new study says that the predictions that most of the ice in the Arctic could disappear by 2060 was optimistic.

A paper from the National Center for Atmospheric Research predicts that the erosion of the sea ice in the Arctic could begin to rapidly accelerate starting in 2025. By 2040 or 2045, roughly 80 percent of the ice in the Arctic could be gone. Only about 2 million square kilometers would be left, said Marika Holland, lead author of the paper. Two million square kilometers is about the size of Alaska.

"The ice is quite stable until 2025 and then, boom, it just goes," Holland said Monday during a presentation at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union taking place in San Francisco this week.

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