Climatologists: By 2100, the Arctic will be ice-free in summer
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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The Arctic is a mosaic of the seas, glaciers and northern outskirts of the continents - a place most of us will never see. And most of us at the mention of the Arctic come to mind only one thing - the ice.
However, the existence of sea ice in the Arctic is radically changing, and its presence will no longer be taken for granted very soon, in our lifetime.
According to the international group of researchers, the Fourth Report (2007) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) incorrectly assessed trends in the thinning and drift of Arctic sea ice, and in some cases significantly underestimated them. The document says that the Arctic by 2100 will be ice-free in the summer. Pierre Rampal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) and his colleagues believe that this will happen several decades earlier.
The purpose of the work of the IPCC, established by the UN in 1988, is to give an average of many conclusions. Sometimes it is criticized for predicting in accordance with the "least common denominator" of climate research. Even now, after comparing the IPCC models with the actual data, scientists concluded that the Arctic sea ice is thinner on average four times faster than the report says, and drifts twice as fast.
Part of the blunder may be due to inadequate modeling of mechanical forces acting on the surface and inside ice in the Arctic Basin. The IPCC models are largely focused on temperature fluctuations, but winds and currents are no less important. They turn ice into "dough", and this mass of small pieces behaves differently than the usual ice.
The mechanical forces play a particularly important role in the winter, when the ice practically does not melt. Earlier at this time, the main part of the Arctic Ocean was covered with a thick layer of ice. Today, this ice is thinner, and under the influence of winds and currents, it breaks up into "ice ensembles", that is, it no longer represents a monolithic mass. Summer warming leads to further decay. Scientists call such a group of ice flax pancakes because of their rounded shape.
Both in winter and in summer such ice tends to escape from the Arctic basin - most often through the Fram Pass, a wide strip of water between Greenland and the Spitsbergen archipelago. The smaller the ice floe, the greater the chances that it will pass through the strait and melt, being in warmer waters.
But there is a reverse trend, which can counteract the loss of ice. For example, large cracks in the winter ice cover contribute to the creation of new ice, because very cold air comes into contact with the liquid ocean and freezes it.
Because of these contradictory trends, it is extremely difficult to predict the future of sea ice in the Arctic. More careful modeling is needed and more direct observations, especially mechanical forces and other phenomena, which have been little studied. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA are now working on combining models and observations.
It should be noted that the IPCC itself acknowledged that in its 2007 report, too much pink. Shortly after its publication, the chairman of the group Rajendra Pachauri warned: "Things will go worse and worse".
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