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Arctic could be ice-free a decade earlier than thought

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Marlowe Hood, Agence France-Presse

<div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img alt="A view of the icebreaker Vidar Viking Mar on expedition about 250 km away from the North Pole to examine sedimentations on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, August 2004. EPA/M. Jakobssohn" src="https://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2023/tvpatrol/06/07/icebreaker.jpg"/><figcaption>A view of the icebreaker Vidar Viking Mar on expedition about 250 km away from the North Pole to examine sedimentations on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, August 2004. <em>EPA/M. Jakobssohn</em></figcaption></figure></div><p>Paris, France - The Arctic Ocean&#x27;s ice cap will disappear in summer as soon as the 2030s and a decade earlier than thought, no matter how aggressively humanity draws down the carbon pollution that drives global warming, scientists said Tuesday.</p><ul class="op-related-articles">	<li><a href="https://news.abs-cbn.com/spotlight/05/11/23/why-is-the-ice-melting-so-fast">Why is the ice melting so fast?</a></li></ul><p>Even capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius in line with the Paris climate treaty will not prevent the north pole&#x27;s vast expanse of floating ice from melting away in September, they reported in Nature Communications.</p><p>&quot;It is too late to still protect the Arctic summer sea ice as a landscape and as a habitat,&quot; co-author Dirk Notz, a professor at the University of Hamburg&#x27;s Institute of Oceanography, told AFP.</p><p>&quot;This will be the first major component of our climate system that we lose because of our emission of greenhouse gases.&quot;</p><ul class="op-related-articles">	<li><a href="https://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/08/19/20/rapidly-occurring-arctic-sea-ice-melting-faster-than-forecast">&#x27;Rapidly occurring&#x27;: Arctic sea ice melting faster than forecast</a></li>	<li><a href="https://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/02/28/23/sea-ice-in-antarctic-at-record-low-us-data-center">Sea ice in Antarctic at record low: US data center</a></li>	<li><a href="https://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/04/04/23/scientists-in-arctic-race-to-preserve-ice-memory">Scientists in Arctic race to preserve &#x27;ice memory&#x27;</a></li></ul><p>Decreased ice cover has serious impacts over time on weather, people and ecosystems -- not just within the region, but globally.</p><p>&quot;It can accelerate global warming by melting permafrost laden with greenhouse gases, and sea level rise by melting the Greenland ice sheet,&quot; lead author Seung-Ki Min, a researcher at Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea, told AFP.</p><p>Greenland&#x27;s kilometres-thick blanket of ice contains enough frozen water to lift oceans six metres.</p><p>By contrast, melting sea ice has no discernible impact on sea levels because the ice is already in ocean water, like ice cubes in a glass.</p><p>But it does feed into a vicious circle of warming.</p><div><strong>Three times faster</strong></div><p>About 90 percent of the Sun&#x27;s energy that hits white sea ice is reflected back into space.</p><p>But when sunlight hits dark, unfrozen ocean water instead, nearly the same amount of that energy is absorbed by the ocean and spread across the globe.</p><p>Both the North and South Pole regions have warmed by three degrees Celsius compared to late 19th-century levels, nearly three times the global average.</p><p>An ice-free September in the 2030s &quot;is a decade faster than in recent projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)&quot;, the UN&#x27;s science advisory body, said Min.</p><p>In its landmark 2021 report, the IPCC forecast with &quot;high confidence&quot; that the Arctic Ocean would become virtually ice-free at least once by mid-century, and even then only under more extreme greenhouse gas emissions scenarios.</p><p>The new study -- which draws from observational data covering the period 1979-2019 to adjust the IPCC models -- finds that threshold will most likely be crossed in the 2040s.</p><p>Min and his colleagues also calculated that human activity was responsible for up to 90 percent of the ice cap&#x27;s shrinking, with only minor impacts from natural factors such as solar and volcanic activity.</p><p>The record minimum sea ice extent in the Arctic -- 3.4 million square kilometres (1.3 million square miles) -- occurred in 2012, with the second- and third-lowest ice-covered areas in 2020 and 2019, respectively.</p><p>Scientists describe the Arctic Ocean as &quot;ice-free&quot; if the area covered by ice is less than one million square kilometres, about seven percent of the ocean&#x27;s total area.</p><p>Sea ice in Antarctica, meanwhile, dropped to 1.92 million square kilometres in February -- the lowest level on record and almost one million square kilometres below the 1991-2020 mean.</p><div><strong>mh/fb</strong></div><div><strong>© Agence France-Presse</strong></div><figure class="op-interactive"><iframe allow="autoplay; fullscreen" frameBorder="0" height="100%" id="ivsplayer01" scrolling="no" src="https://player.ivideosmart.com/ivsplayer/v4/dist/html/iframe-src.html?iframeid=ivsplayer01&amp;key=e8c22c015ca9eafa76f1e3edfa03c603&amp;spid=3001339&amp;vid=1702105" width="100%"></iframe></figure><div class="iwantbar">Watch more News on <a href="https://www.iwanttfc.com/#!/browse/Genres/News/tag_id_genres/id_news" target="_blank">iWantTFC</a></div>

The Arctic Ocean's ice cap will disappear in summer as soon as the 2030s and a decade earlier than thought, no matter how aggressively humanity draws down the carbon pollution that drives global warming, scientists said Tuesday.

Arctic could be ice-free a decade earlier than thought

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Arctic could be ice-free a decade earlier than thought

Marlowe Hood,

Agence France-Presse

Published June 07, 2023 09:38 AM PHT

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Updated June 07, 2023 09:40 AM PHT

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