Roger Coppock wrote in
:

Thank you Mr. Asher for debunking the old submarine
at the North Pole myths. The subs used their SONAR
to find a natural weak spot in the existing ice before
they surfaced. There was ice at the pole when they
surfaced. Now, thanks to polar amplified global
warming there will be no ice at the North Pole.

Roger:

It is by no means certain the pole will be ice free, at least this year.
However, if you google around you can find trends in multi-year ice
coverage from IceSat (I think the string is something like "icesat multi-
year trend" and it will dig out a powerpoint from the IceSat technical
lead (no pun intended) at JPL). The decline in surface area coverage of
multi-year ice is more remarkable than an ice-free pole, since a lot of
the multi-year ice is grounded against Greenland and its areal extent is
not so susceptable to variability.

Here's an example:

http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaice...04_Figure6.png

As an aside, one of the other things that can happen with multi-year sea
ice is that the top part melts, forming a shallow lake. But since the
ice is several meters thick there is still an underlying ice sheet. Some
of the "leads" in the 1987 image in John-Daly.com (the one with the three
subs) look to me like surface melt, not actual leads. But it's hard to
tell from a single image taken at a slant.

--
Bill Asher