I need your help for a short research project

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090402_seaice.html
Ice-Free Arctic Summers Likely Sooner Than Expected April 2, 2009
Summers in the Arctic may be ice-free in as few as 30 years, not at the end of the century as previously expected. The updated forecast is the result of a new analysis of computer models coupled with the most recent summer ice measurements. ….“The Arctic is changing faster than anticipated,” said James Overland, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and co-author of the study,………Overland and his co-author, Muyin Wang, a University of Washington research scientist with the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean in Seattle, analyzed projections from six computer models, including three with sophisticated sea ice physics capabilities. That data was then combined with observations of summer sea ice loss in 2007 and 2008…..The area covered by summer sea ice is expected to decline from its current 4.6 million square kilometers (about 1.8 million square miles) to about 1 million square kilometers (about 390,000 square miles) – a loss approximately two-fifths the size of the continental U.S. Much of the sea ice would remain in the area north of Canada and Greenland and decrease between Alaska and Russia in the Pacific Arctic………..The Arctic is often called the ‘Earth’s refrigerator’ because the sea ice helps cool the planet by reflecting the sun’s radiation back into space,” said Wang. “With less ice, the sun’s warmth is instead absorbed by the open water, contributing to warmer temperatures in the water and the air.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100802173736.htm
Ice-Free Arctic Ocean May Not Be of Much Use in Soaking Up Carbon Dioxide
ScienceDaily (Aug. 3, 2010) — The summer of 2010 has been agonizingly hot in much of the continental U.S., and the record-setting temperatures have refocused attention on global warming. Scientists have been looking at ways the Earth might benefit from natural processes to balance the rising heat, and one process had intrigued them, a premise that melting ice at the poles might allow more open water that could absorb carbon dioxide, one of the major compounds implicating in warming. ……Now, though, in research just published in the journal Science and led by a University of Georgia biogeochemist, that idea may be one more dead end. In fact, a survey of waters in the Canada Basin, which extends north of Alaska to the North Pole, shows that its value as a potential carbon dioxide “sink” may be short-lived at best and minor in terms of what the planet will need to avoid future problems.
“The Canada Basin and entire Arctic Ocean are still taking up carbon dioxide,” said Wei-Jun Cai, a professor in the department of marine biology in UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and lead author of the study. “But our research shows that as the ice melts, the carbon dioxide in the water very quickly reaches equilibrium with the atmosphere, so its use as a place to store CO2 declines dramatically and quickly. We never really understood how limited these waters would be in terms of their usefulness in soaking up carbon dioxide.”
The carbon dioxide level in the Earth’s atmosphere has increased dramatically since the industrial revolution, and around 30 percent of that CO2 has been absorbedby the oceans. That has been the good news. The bad news is that it increases the acidification of the seas, causing changes in conditions for the growth of all life forms.
Melting in the planet’s Arctic zone has been dramatic in the past three years. A recent paper predicted that the Arctic Ocean would be ice-free during summer within 30 years, Cai noted. Researchers in years past had predicted that increased areas of open water in the Arctic, while troublesome in many ways, might at least sequester increasing amounts of carbon dioxide because of summertime ice melts.
“This prediction, however, was made based on observations of very low surface water carbon dioxide levels,” said Cai, “from either highly productive ocean margin areas or basin areas under earlier ice-covered conditions before the recent major ice retreat.”
…..an international team of scientists in the summer of 2008 boarded the retrofitted Chinese research vessel Xue Long (Snow Dragon) for a three-month research voyage………..What Cai and colleagues found was that as greater areas of ice melt each summer, the Canada Basin’s potential as a CO2 sink will diminish dramatically mainly because of the rapid uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere. And because of this carbon dioxide uptake, the waters become quite acidic and “a poor environment for calcium-carbonate shell-bearing marine organisms,” Cai said.
“One of the take-away lessons of this research is that we can’t expect the oceans to do the job of helping offset global warming in the short term,” said Cai.
Cai’s work is supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In the paper “A Sea Ice Free Summer Arctic Within 30 Years?” published in the April 3, 2009 edition of Geophysical Research Letters, authors J.E. Overland and Muyin Wang say,
“”””[10] Our expected time frame of ~30 years to reach a September sea ice free Arctic is based on current conditions in the Arctic and information from the currently available set of fully coupled CMIP3 atmosphere-ocean-ice General Circulation Models (GCMs).””””
John

Just to make sure you don’t forget the April 2009 WUWT article at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/26/ice-at-the-north-pole-in-1958-not-so-thick/

I searched for ‘ice free Arctic by” and was prompted with”ice free Arctic by 2030″ then
“ice free Arctic by 2015” and then “ice free Arctic by 2013”
This means further out in the future the prediction is, the more hits on google.

Ok. This was just entertaining, so I scrolled through the thread and snagged the dates spotted.
I didn’t count multiples since I had no idea if they were referencing identical studies. For a range, picked middle date, for “in 10 years” just added 10 to publication. This is of course excessive precision, but this is just for fun.
1989 2000 2002 2008 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2019 2020 2025 2029 2030 2031 2037 2039 2040 2067 2070 2105
aaand
1959+”not too many decades”

NSIDC-Researcher Walt Meier: 2030
http://www.focus.de/wissen/wissenschaft/klima/polarforschung-ist-die-arktis-2030-eisfrei_aid_333977.html
Article from 2008-09-18
Leif Toudal Pedersen from Danish National Spacecenter: 2040
http://www.infobildungsdienst.de/forschung.html
Article from 2007-09-18
The same month and day but different year.

Time May 17 1954
“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.””
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,860739,00.html

In 2009, Al Gore predicted an Ice free Arctic in five years:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2009/12/15/inconvenient-truth-gore-claims-dont-add/
Apparently he’s still at it with a “75% chance if ice free” prediction in 2011:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6815470/Copenhagen-climate-summit-Al-Gore-condemned-over-Arctic-ice-melting-prediction.html