Washington: There could be a brief time this summer when there is no ice on the North Pole, said a U.S. scientist, blaming global warming that has melted the Arctic ice sheet over decades. "We could have no ice at the North Pole at the end of this summer,' Mark Serreze, a scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, told AFP. "And the reason here is that the North Pole area right now is covered with very thin ice and this ice we call first year ice, the ice that tends to melt out in the summer.'