The Arctic is warming almost twice as fast as the rest of the planet due to global warming, according to an eight-nation report compiled by 250 scientists. "The big melt has begun," said Jennifer Morgan, director of the WWF's global climate change campaign.

A thaw of the Arctic icecap is accelerating because of global warming but nations in the region including the United States are deadlocked about how to stop it.

An eight-nation report compiled by 250 scientists due for publication on November 8th says the Arctic is warming almost twice as fast as the rest of the planet due to a build-up of heat- trapping gases and the trend is set to continue.

"We are taking a risk with the global climate," said Mr. Paal Prestrud, vice-chair of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) report, which says emissions of gases from cars, factories and power plants are mostly to blame.

The Arctic icecap has shrunk by 15-20 per cent in the past 30 years and the contraction is likely to accelerate, Mr. Prestrud said. The Arctic Ocean could be almost ice-free in summer by the end of the century.

Inuit hunters are falling through ice, permafrost is thawing and destabilizing foundations of buildings and vital winter roads, while the habitat of creatures from polar bears to seals is literally melting away.

The report says that the thaw will have some positive side-effects. Oil and gas deposits will be easier to reach, more farming may be possible and short-cut trans-Arctic shipping lanes may open.

Diplomats said governments in nations around the Arctic rim -- the United States, Russia, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland -- disagree about what to do, with the United States most opposed to any drastic action.

Arctic nations are meant to agree policy recommendations based on the report at a meeting of foreign ministers in Iceland on November 24th.

"U.S. negotiators say 'we already have a policy on global warming -- we can't have a new one just for the Arctic'," one European diplomat said. Government negotiators will try to break deadlock with a new round of talks in mid-November.

President George W Bush pulled out of the UN's Kyoto protocol on global warming in 2001, arguing it was too expensive and wrongly excluded developing nations.

The other Arctic nations, most recently Russia, have agreed to Kyoto's target of cutting developed nations' emissions of carbon dioxide by 5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

The WWF environmental group yesterday accused the eight nations, which account for 30 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, of hypocrisy in sponsoring the Arctic report while failing to crack down.

"The big melt has begun," Ms. Jennifer Morgan, director of the WWF's global climate change campaign, said in a statement. She said industrialized nations were using the Arctic as a guinea pig in an uncontrolled experiment on climate change.

Scientists have agreed to discuss parts of the report ahead of full publication.

The report projects that temperatures in the Arctic will rise by four to seven degrees in the next 100 years.

If temperatures then stayed stable, the Greenland icecap would melt altogether in 1,000 years and raise global sea levels by about seven meters.

The thaw of the icecap floating on the Arctic Ocean does not affect sea levels, in the same way that a full glass of water with an ice cube jutting above the brim does not spill when the ice melts since ice takes up more space than water.

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