The image of Arctic completely released from sea ice in summer could occur sooner than expected: in 2027according to new research that warns of the acceleration of defrosting times in the magazine Nature Communications.
An international team of researchers led by climatologists Alexandra Jahn (University of Colorado Boulder) and Celine Heuzé (University of Gothenburg in Sweden), has used computer models for predict when the first day without ice could occur in the northernmost ocean.
An ice-free Arctic, as scientists have warned for decades, could significantly affect the ecosystem and the climate of the Land as weather patterns change.
“The first day without ice in the Arctic will not change things radically, but will demonstrate that we have altered one of the defining characteristics of the natural environment of the Arctic due to greenhouse gas emissions,” Alexandra Jahn said in a statement.
To conclude that the Arctic will be ice-free within three years, researchers projected the first ice-free day using the results of more than 300 computer simulations.
They found that most models predicted that the first day without ice could occur between nine and 20 years after 2023regardless of how the greenhouse gas emissions.
But the authors have seen that there are a series of extreme weather events that could melt two million square kilometers or more of sea ice in a short period of time: an unusually warm autumn first weakens the sea ice, followed by a warm winter and spring in the Arctic that prevent sea ice from forming.
When this place experiences such extreme warming for three or more years in a row, the first day without ice could occur at the end of summer. According to these last variables, nine simulations suggested that an ice-free day could occur within three years, or at most within six.
However, the researchers warn that all is not lost and that in their models they have seen that Drastic reduction in emissions could delay the disappearance of ice and reduce the time the ocean remains ice-free. “Any reduction in emissions would help preserve sea ice,” stresses Jahn.
A blue Arctic
As the weather is warming Due to increasing greenhouse gas emissions, Arctic sea ice has disappeared at a rate unprecedented speed of more than 12% every decade.
Last September, the Colorado National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that the day with the lowest amount of frozen seawater in the Arctic was one of the lowest on record since 1978: 4.28 million square kilometersthis year’s low was above the all-time low seen in September 2012.
This minimum marks a decrease compared to the average coverage of 6.85 million square kilometers between 1979 and 1992. When the Arctic Ocean has less than one million square kilometers of ice, scientists consider the Arctic to be ice-free.
Previous studies by the same team tried to predict when this ocean will be completely ice-free for a full month, concluding that this would occur in the 2030s.
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