As of: March 7, 2024, 8:59 a.m
By: Florian Neuroth
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Is ice becoming scarce in the Arctic?
A study shows: The first “ice-free” day comes earlier than expected and soon a whole month with almost no sea ice.
Boulder, Colorado – People in the Arctic still talk about “eternal ice”.
Millions of square kilometers of frozen water floating over the ocean at all times of the year.
But that will probably be over soon.
Because the ice is melting - due to man-made climate change and the warming of our earth.
The white masses cover less and less area around the North Pole in the summer months.
This is on Greenland, on the ice sheet there, as well as in other places in the Arctic.
Researchers warned last summer that it could be ice-free in ten years.
And even that assumption may have been overly optimistic.
This is what a new study from the United States suggests.
Accordingly, there could be summer days in the coming years when there will be practically no sea ice in the Arctic.
The results suggested “that the first ice-free day in the Arctic could occur more than ten years earlier than previous forecasts,” writes the University of Colorado Boulder, where the study was carried out.
The first “ice-free” day in the Arctic will soon be here, according to a new study.
This has significant consequences for animals.
© imago images/imagebroker
According to the study, there will be an ice-free month in the Arctic by the middle of the century
On Tuesday (March 5th), the authors led by atmospheric and ocean scientist Alexandra Jahn published the study in the journal Nature Review Earth & Environment.
According to the university, they analyzed existing literature and data on sea ice cover from computer-based climate models.
They wanted to estimate how the Arctic will change in the future.
The result is worrying: According to this, there should be an ice-free month in the Arctic in September by the middle of the century.
Towards the end of the century, this time could even extend to several months - in the worst case scenario, a whopping nine months.
“This would transform the Arctic into a completely different environment, from a white summer Arctic to a blue Arctic,” Jahn explained.
Greenhouse gas emissions are the main cause of ice melting in the Arctic
According to the scientist, the main cause of ice loss is greenhouse gas emissions.
A thinner snow and ice cover means the ocean absorbs more heat from sunlight, worsening ice melt and Arctic warming.
This has a significant impact on the animal kingdom.
Seals and polar bears rely on the sea ice, and researchers also fear the influx of foreign fish species.
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Scientists consider the Arctic to be “ice-free” when the ocean has less than one million square kilometers of ice.
According to the university, this is less than 20 percent of the minimum seasonal ice cover in the Arctic in the 1980s.
If you look at the past few years, the Arctic Sea had a minimum of around 3.3 million square kilometers of sea ice in September.
But that will change, the researchers predict.
In all emissions scenarios, the threshold value will be exceeded for the first time on a day in late August or early September between the 2020s and 2030s.
Arctic sea ice may return as the atmosphere cools
According to Jahn, this cannot be prevented.
But “while ice-free conditions are unavoidable, we still need to keep our emissions as low as possible to avoid prolonged ice-free conditions,” she says.
This means: the fewer emissions humanity puts into the air, the shorter the ice-free periods.
But there is some good news: if the atmosphere cools, the sea ice can return.
Jahn explains: “Even if we melt all the Arctic sea ice, the sea ice will come back within a decade, we should figure out how to bring CO2 back from the atmosphere in the future to reverse the warming.”
(Florian Neuroth)