Earth’s ice caps are in trouble. New studies reveal how bad the damage is
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MARCH 11, 2024
Like a trio of canaries in a coal mine warbling at the top of their lungs, threerecent studies warn of various ways that global warming is drastically changing the planet. Each study involves the cryosphere, or those regions on the planet where water freezes into ice or snow. Both the Arctic and the Antarctic are melting — and scientists are recording the consequences.
“The earliest ice-free conditions… could occur in 2020–2030s under all emission trajectories and are likely to occur by 2050.”
First is a study by researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder and published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment. After creating models based on past data chronicling sea ice area shrinkage in the Arctic Ocean, the scientists determined that we will soon enter an unprecedented future… one where during the summer there is no sea ice at all. Notably, this will happen regardless of whether humanity meets the emissions targets set during the Paris climate accord.
“The earliest ice-free conditions (the first single occurrence of an ice-free Arctic) could occur in 2020–2030s under all emission trajectories and are likely to occur by 2050,” the authors write. This does not mean that the ocean will have literally zero ice in it, but rather that it meets the scientific definition of being “ice-free”: When the entire Arctic Ocean has less than 1 square kilometer (or 386,000 square miles) of ice.
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