Even if greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced significantly, the Arctic will probably be free of summer ice between 2030 and 2050. That means the sea ice in the Arctic may have melted a lot faster than originally expected.
The UN climate panel IPCC previously examined various scenarios in which greenhouse gas emissions continue as they do now. In those scenarios, the North Pole would be ice-free in summers by 2050.
But new research, published in Nature Communications, shows that ice-free summers will occur even with low emissions. And possibly as early as 2030. The research was conducted by South Korean and German scientists using satellite data.
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In an ice-free summer, the month of September is considered. That’s generally the month with the least sea ice in the Arctic, the researchers’ measurement data confirmed. They also concluded that there is less sea ice in the Arctic every September since 2000.
The researchers warn that the Arctic will be ice-free every summer for the foreseeable future. This could have major consequences for societies and ecosystems “inside and outside the Arctic”.
“This is the first major part of the Earth that we are going to lose to climate change,” Dirk Notz, author of the report and professor at the University of Hamburg, told The Guardian.
Notz also points out that scientists have been predicting for years that summers at the North Pole may soon be free of sea ice. “People didn’t listen to our warnings.”
2023-06-06 18:41:00
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