Sea Ice Off Alaska in Dire Straits, Report reveals

...using the most reliable models, the NOAA scientists reached the same unhappy conclusion: By 2050, summer sea ice in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska's north coast likely will have diminished by 40 percent compared to the 1980s. The same is likely for the East Siberian-Chukchi Sea region off northwest Alaska and Russia. In contrast, Canada's Baffin Bay and Labrador showed little predicted change.

There was less confidence for winter ice, but the models also predict a sea ice loss of more than 40 percent for the Bering Sea off Alaska's west coast, the Sea of Okhotsk east of Siberia and the Barents Sea north of Norway.

A 40 percent loss of summer sea ice off Alaska in the Beaufort Sea could have profound effects on marine mammals dependent on the sea ice such as polar bears, now under consideration by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for "threatened" status under the Endangered Species Act because of changes in the animals' habitat from global warming.