Ice-free Arctic summers could arrive sooner than expected: study
The journal Nature predicts ice could disappear in late summer by 2030s
Polar bears are heavily dependent on the ice for hunting seals, their main source of food. A new study in the science journal Nature predicts the Arctic could be ice-free in late summer by the 2030s. (File photo)
The Arctic could see late summers that are ice-free as early as the 2030s, a new study suggests.
That’s 10 years sooner than previous environmental models projected, according to the science journal Nature, which published the findings Tuesday.
Ice models vary based on what is or isn’t done to combat climate change. This study concludes that regardless of what action is taken, the Arctic will see less ice, and sooner.
Arctic ice melt follows a cycle that starts in the summer and reaches its peak in September. Ice begins to build up again as the weather turns cooler.
This key period in September is when scientists first expect to see an ice-free Arctic.
As time goes on, the length of ice-free periods is projected to grow. The new modelling includes a worst-case scenario that if climate change continues unabated, the Arctic could be partially or completely ice-free from June to October by the 2100s.
Previous, more conservative estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have predicted, regardless of the conditions, ice-free Septembers by between 2081 and 2100, according to the study.
These conclusions were published in the panel’s Sixth Assessment Report of the United Nations, which interprets scientific, technical and socioeconomic data on climate change.
A previous study from 2020 shares some of Nature’s conclusions.
Perhaps China should stop building thousands more coal burning plants. Perhaps government workers and politicians should utilize video chat instead of duty travel. But, besides all that, its a good thing polar bears can sleep while they swim 🙂
All science and the scientists never still figured this out and tells us the world will not freeze anymore in 10/20 years lmfao,
Polar bears can survive look at the poor bears in zoos.
Harvester
Just a few thousand years ago Iqaluit was under a sheet of ice 2 kilometers thick. At the same time Minnesota was covered by a sheet of ice one kilometer thick. Nature is very powerful! Evolution, thermodynamics, geomorphism. So interesting.
Relatedly, the human-made climate industry is killing us
These scientists never get it right. They can barely predict the weather next month.
Funding must be getting low so do another alarming climate change report. The climate has been changing since the beginning of time and it will continue to change long after we are gone.
Scientists get it wrong more than they get it right, that is true… but that is how science is designed to work. And it does work. Science is built on the most successful method of discovery and knowledge creation our species has ever devised.
If you don’t believe me let’s look at what it has produced when it finally does get it right.
We get things like the internet, like Starlink, we get the ability to travel though space, and shuffle astronauts back and forth to a space station continuously occupied and orbiting the earth for the last 23 years. We get massive colliders that reveal the secrets of particle physics. We can build a rover capable of taking soil samples on Mars and sending that information back to earth through a network of ground-based communication satellites. We get vaccines to prevent polio, smallpox, tetanus and other deadly diseases.
As for prediction, they can predict the evaporation of black holes billions of years in the future.
That’s just scratching the surface…
Still, all that and they can barely predict the weather next month!
True. The atmosphere is a highly complex system. Despite that we can predict a week ahead within 80% accuracy, or 90% over 5 days. Granted, over a 10-day period that drops to around 50%.
If that is not good enough maybe you have a better method? Can you tell us what the temperature and wind speed will look like in Arviat on July 9th or the 10th, and so on, and so on… What does your accuracy rate look like over long periods of time? Can you show us your data?
They’ve been saying “10 years til the arctic is ice free” for decades, and it hasn’t happened.
Al Gore claimed that kids in 2014 “wouldn’t know what snow is”. Since then, North America has had some of the snowiest years ever.
These alarmists are nuts!