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The ice is melting.
And that for a long time.
There is hardly a better example than the Arctic to show what climate change is doing to the earth.
Christoph Seidler, DER SPIEGEL:
"The Arctic has been warming for about 30 years, let's say plus minus twice as fast as the rest of the planet."
This increase has had dramatic consequences in the past decade.
And this year the development can be seen particularly extreme.
It is quite normal for Arctic ice to recede in summer.
It happens every year.
However, this is what this process looked like in the 1980s.
And so in the past few years.
It becomes clear that there is now significantly less ice left at the end of summer than there was 30 years ago.
And this year it was as little as almost never before.
On September 15, 3.74 million square kilometers were measured.
For comparison: the red line shows the average minimum between 1981 and 2010.
It is only the second time that the ice sheet is less than 4 million square kilometers.
Only in 2012 was there even less ice left, at that time it was only 3.39 million square kilometers.
But why is it so extreme this year?
Christoph Seidler, DER SPIEGEL:
"Several things happened at the same time. The ice, so to speak, melted from above and below at the same time. We had several heat waves at the top in quotation marks. We have also seen that in Siberia, for example, this contributed to these major fires At the same time it is like this: when the ice melts, this white reflective surface on the ocean is gone. Then there is something that is dark. Then it is no longer the case that the solar radiation that comes in is reflected So the water continues to heat up. Then it can become warm and also melt from below. "
Exactly how dramatic the development will be in a year also depends on the weather.
This year, for example, a storm in Canada's Arctic region drifted apart ice floes, which then melted faster.
But even without new records, the permanent decline has long been visible.
Christoph Seidler, DER SPIEGEL:
"The 14 years with the smallest ice extent that we have, so to speak since the satellite measurements began in the late 1970s, were the last 14 calendar years. In principle, as researchers say, the whole region is now in This means that this warmth is in there, and it doesn't go out. And even in a really cold winter, the ice would, in case of doubt, not expand as far as it would, for example, in the middle of the 20th century. "
One consequence of climate change is the global sea level.
However, the process of melting sea ice does not change this.
Because the ice does not lie on a land mass, but is already part of the sea.
Christoph Seidler, DER SPIEGEL:
"It's a bit like the cubes in the cola glass, the ice cubes. When they melt, the cola glass does not overflow. And it is similar here, too."
It is different, for example, with glaciers in Greenland, where the mainland ice of the Arctic lies.
When that melts and slides into the sea, it raises the sea level.
Only a few weeks ago a 113 square kilometer ice sheet broke off from the largest remaining glacier in Greenland.
Before that, more and more cracks had appeared over the years.
The Antarctic around the South Pole plays an even bigger role in terms of sea level views.
Because this is based on a very large mainland mass.
So there is a lot more mainland ice here that flows into the sea when it melts.
But melting sea ice also has serious consequences.
First of all, because the warming oceans are directly contributing to global warming.
In addition, the development is also upsetting the wildlife of the Arctic.
Christoph Seidler, DER SPIEGEL:
"Suddenly a new ocean is emerging before our eyes. That means the entire ecosystems that exist there are changing. Quite classic: the polar bear can somehow no longer hunt from spring or has difficulties when hunting, because he can no longer get to where the seals are. The fish move to regions that are increasingly northerly, where they haven't been in the summer months until now. And so on. "
There is no end in sight to this development.
On the contrary: the outlook for the coming years is rather fatal:
Christoph Seidler, DER SPIEGEL:
"There have always been forecasts as to when the North Pole could be free of ice in summer. And one thing is clear: we are moving in this direction, so to speak. Whether that will be in 2039 or in 2042, You'll see that. But it's going down in the long term. We are now well below the long-term trends, and we're also going down the trend, so to speak. And that's a process. You'd have to be very, very, very, very much about that make an effort to somehow give the Arctic sea ice a chance for the future. I don't see it. In principle, this is a battlefield where the battle is in principle already fought and lost. But that does not mean that we are not concerned with this question It is of course also important for further developments in the Arctic how much CO2 mankind emits. The Arctic ice has very, very bad prospects in the medium term in summer, so to speak. "
