The Arctic is about to get ‘severely ill’

New study results show the Arctic could run out of sea ice as early as 2030, much sooner than expected.

Scientists are warning that Arctic sea ice may be running out a decade earlier than scheduled, another clear indication that the climate crisis is happening faster than expected as the world continues to pump out pollution from a warming planet.

new Study published in Nature Communications He concluded that sea ice in the Arctic could completely disappear by September in 2030. Even if the world makes significant reductions in global warming pollution, the Arctic could be free of sea ice by 2050, according to scientists.

The researchers studied changes between 1979 and 2019, comparing different satellite data and climate models to assess how sea ice in the Arctic is changing.

They found that the decline of sea ice was largely the result of human-caused pollution and global warming, and previous models had underestimated trends in sea ice melt in the Arctic.

“We were surprised to find that the Arctic would be ice-free in the summer, regardless of our efforts to reduce emissions, which was not expected,” Song Ki-min, lead author of the study and professor at the University of Science and Technology, told CNN. From Pohang, South Korea.

Ice in the Arctic builds up during the winter and then melts in the summer, usually reaching its lowest levels in September before the cycle starts again.

Maine noted that when the Arctic summers are ice-free, sea ice build-up in colder seasons will be much slower. The warmer the climate, the more likely it is that the Arctic will be free of sea ice during the cold season.

According to the study, in a “higher emissions scenario” — in which the world continues to burn fossil fuels and pollution levels that warm the planet continue to increase — the Arctic is expected to record a complete loss of sea ice from August to October, before 2080, Maine noted. .

The study’s findings contradict the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2021 State of the Science report, which found the Arctic would be “nearly ice-free near mid-century under medium and high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios.” “.

This new study shows that this could happen ten years earlier, regardless of emissions scenarios.

In recent decades, the Arctic has warmed four times faster than the rest of the world, according to a 2022 study. Rapid sea ice loss has already been recorded in the region, with sea ice present from September to at a rate of 12.6% per decadeAccording to NASA.

An Arctic without summer sea ice would have dire effects around the world. Glowing white ice reflects solar energy away from Earth. As this ice melts, it exposes the darker ocean, which absorbs more heat, causing additional warming—a feedback process called “Arctic amplification.”

Decreased sea ice could also have an impact on global climate that extends far beyond the Arctic.

“We should prepare for a world with a warmer polar region very soon,” Min predicted. “Because warming in the Arctic will lead to extreme weather events such as heat waves, wildfires, and floods in northern mid- and high latitudes, the early appearance of the ice-free Arctic also means that extreme events will happen faster than expected.”

Freeing the Arctic of ice could also lead to an increase in commercial shipping as new routes are opened, which will have a knock-on effect. According to the Annual Report on the Arctic published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last year [NOAA]Increased marine traffic will lead to more emissions and pollution in the region.

Mika Rantanen, a researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute and lead author of the 2022 study, told CNN that the now published study made use of a “new and advanced methodology” for predicting when the Arctic will be free of ice.

“The methodology is very careful and allows for a high degree of attribution certainty,” said Rantanen, who was not involved in the new study. “The most surprising finding is not the fact that the loss of sea ice is attributable to an increase in greenhouse gases, which was already widely known, but the fact that an ice-free Arctic is expected sooner than previously thought, about a decade later.”

For Maine, the findings show that the Arctic is about to become “severely ill” and that the region has reached a “point of no return.”

Compare Maine: “We can think of Arctic sea ice as our body’s immune system, which protects it from harmful things.” “Without a protector, the state of the Arctic would quickly go from bad to worse.”