Editing Open Polar Sea (section)

==Disproof and re-emergence==
[[File:2007 Arctic Sea Ice.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[Arctic shrinkage]] as of 2007 compared to previous years]]
The Open Polar Sea was debunked gradually by the failure of the expeditions in the 1810s to the 1880s to navigate the polar sea. Reports of open water by earlier explorers, such as [[Elisha Kent Kane]] and [[Isaac Israel Hayes]], fueled optimism in the theory in the 1850s and 1860s. Support faded when [[George W. De Long]] [[Jeannette expedition|sailed]] {{USS|Jeannette|1878|6}} into the [[Bering Strait]] in the hope of finding an open gateway to the North Pole and was met by a sea of ice. After a long drift, pack ice crushed the ''Jeannette'', and her survivors returned home with first hand accounts of an ice-covered polar sea. Other explorers such as British explorer [[George Nares]] confirmed it.

When [[Fridtjof Nansen]] and [[Otto Sverdrup]] drifted through the polar ice pack in ''[[Fram (ship)|Fram]]'' in 1893 to 1895, the Open Polar Sea was a defunct theory.

Nevertheless, scientific studies of [[global warming]] in the 2000s project that by the end of the 21st century, the annual summer withdrawal of the polar ice cap could expose large areas of the Arctic Ocean as open water, and an ice-free Arctic is possible in the future because of [[Arctic shrinkage]]. Although the North Pole itself could potentially remain ice-covered in winter, a navigable seasonal sea passage from Europe to the Pacific [[Arctic shipping routes|could develop]] along the north coast of Asia.