A month without sea ice at the North Pole could happen before the end of the decade. The Arctic Ocean could experience a first month of September (the month with the lowest ice surface) without ice floes as early as this decade.
According to the European Copernicus agency, 2.1 million square kilometers of ice sea disappeared between 1979 and 2021, more than 6 times the area of Germany. Until the 1990s, the Arctic ice was on average 2 or 3 years old and was relatively thick.