A new study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications found Arctic sea ice could disappear completely during the month of September as early as the 2030s. Even if the world makes significant cuts to planet-heating pollution today, the Arctic could still see summers free of sea ice by the 2050s, scientists reported.
The researchers analyzed changes from 1979 to 2019, comparing different satellite data and climate models to assess how Arctic sea ice was changing.
They found that declining sea ice was largely the result of human-caused, planet-heating pollution, and previous models had underestimated Arctic sea ice melting trends.
“We were surprised to find that an ice-free Arctic will be there in summer irrespective of our effort at reducing emissions, which was not expected,” Seung-Ki Min, lead author of the study and professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea, told CNN.
Arctic ice builds up during the winter and then melts in the summer, typically reaching its lowest levels in September, before the cycle begins again.
Once Arctic summers become ice-free, the buildup of sea ice in the colder seasons will be much slower, Min said. The warmer it gets, the more likely the Arctic is to stay free of sea ice further into the colder season.
Under a “higher emissions pathway” – in which the world continues to burn fossil fuels and levels of planet-warming pollution continue to rise – the study projects the Arctic will see a complete loss of sea ice from August until as late as October before the 2080s, Min said.
The study’s findings contrast with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2021 state-of-the-science report, which found the Arctic would be “be practically ice-free near mid-century under intermediate and high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios.”
This new study shows it could happen 10 years earlier, regardless of emission scenarios, Min said. Read more:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/06/world/arctic-sea-ice-free-climate-change/index.html
