The Arctic Ocean could go from white to ice-free sooner than expected. The first summer to melt virtually all Arctic sea ice could occur in 2027. How do they know?
Arctic sea ice extent has been monitored by satellites since 1978; since then, several institutions such as NASA, NOAA and other research centers have noticed variations in Arctic ice. According to their report: summer ice is shrinking by 12 percent per decade.
What do scientists mean by “ice-free Arctic Ocean”?
Arctic sea ice has been steadily declining throughout satellite records, due to warming of the climate caused by human activities. Researchers debate when the Arctic Ocean is likely to experience its first “ice-free” summer.
Despite the impression this may make, the ice-free Arctic Ocean is a definition that does not properly mean the total loss of the ice sheet, it is a reduction of sea ice to 15% of its concentration. That is, more than 1 million square kilometers without ice.
In fact, to understand this, NOAA made a graph of the passage of ships through the Arctic Ocean during the summer of 2009 to 2018, which shows the increase in the passage of ships through the cold marine region.
This is because scarce sea ice remains in conditions designated as ice-free, but that ice persists mainly in hidden areas of the Arctic Ocean.
What will trigger the Arctic Ocean’s ice-free season?
The main trigger for the rapid transition to the first ice-free day within three to six years will be a warm atmosphere in the previous winter and spring, leading to a year-round loss of sea ice mass, the researchers identified.
This could cause an ice-free period that will last between 11 and 53 days, researchers Celine Heuze (University of Gothenburg, Sweden) and Alexandra Jahn (University of Colorado at Boulder, USA) report in a statement After multiple models from Phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project.
According to the specialists, it will show that we have fundamentally altered one of the defining characteristics of the natural environment of the Arctic Ocean, which is that it is covered with sea ice and snow throughout the year, through greenhouse gas emissions.
This situation makes a long-term trend of shrinking and thinning of ice in the Arctic Ocean.
Why is this study important?
Sea ice protects the Arctic from warming by reflecting incoming sunlight back into space. With less reflective ice, darker ocean waters will absorb more heat from the sun, further increasing temperatures in the Arctic and around the world.
In addition, warming of the Arctic could change wind patterns and ocean currents, leading to more extreme weather events around the world.
Sea ice forms in the oceans of the polar regions, where some of the coldest conditions on our planet occur, often accompanied by months of winter darkness, so it can melt shortly after forming if transported to a warm enough place.
This article was originally written in Spanish by Perla Vallejo in Cultura Colectiva
