a hospitable place for them to live. Disproof and re-emergence 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 sailed 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 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 could develop along the north coast of Asia. See also Northwest Passage Superseded theories in science References General references Potter, R. (2004). "The Open Polar Sea". Encyclopedia of the Arctic. Routledge. Robinson, M. (2006). The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture. Chicago. Robinson, M. (2006). "Reconsidering the Theory of the Open Polar Sea". Extremes: Oceanography's Adventures at the Poles. Sides, H. (2014). In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the U.S.S. Jeannette. New York: Doubleday. Wright, J. K. (1966). The Open Polar Sea, Human Nature in Geography. Cambridge. Effects of climate change Jeannette expedition Obsolete scientific theories Seas of the Arctic Ocean North Pole