Too late to save Arctic summer ice?
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00:00 Now according to a study conducted by scientists based in Korea, Canada and in Germany, the
00:05 Arctic Ocean's ice caps will disappear in summer by the 2030s. That's a decade earlier
00:11 than previously thought. Scientists say this is set to happen no matter how aggressively
00:17 we reduce carbon pollution, which drives global warming.
00:21 Well, to tell us a bit more, Julia Seager joins me now here in the studio from our science
00:25 desk. And Julia, first of all, just tell us what's in this study.
00:28 Well, first of all, it's a simulation based on observational data that was collected from
00:33 1979 to 2019. And the result indeed indicates that the first ice-free September in the Arctic
00:39 could happen as early as 2030, regardless of emissions scenarios. So when scientists
00:45 say that we're talking about the Arctic Ocean being ice-free, what do they mean? First of
00:50 all, they're referring to what we call sea ice. So we're not talking here about glaciers
00:54 or ice sheets. We're talking about sea ice, which is ice water that has consolidated and
01:00 is floating on the water. And it tends to retreat. It doesn't tend, but it retreats
01:05 in summer and it reforms in the winter. And September is indeed the time where the ice
01:13 reaches its annual minimum. So this is why scientists were looking at September specifically.
01:18 When they say it's ice-free, there again, they don't mean that there's not going to
01:21 be any ice anymore at all. They're referring to a scientific threshold where this sea ice
01:27 would only cover about 7% of the Arctic Ocean. But this would already be devastating, of
01:33 course, for the environment. Now, researchers estimate that the decline of the ice is directly
01:37 due to greenhouse gas emissions, of course, but there are other factors as well to take
01:42 into consideration aerosols, solar and volcanic activity as well.
01:47 And Julia, tell us, is it just this study or are there others that have also reached
01:50 the same conclusion? Well, there's another study from Sweden that
01:53 came out on Tuesday and they were actually investigating currents in the deep Arctic
01:58 and they found that it's much warmer than we previously thought and also closer to the
02:02 surface and it's directly interacting with the sea ice. They also say that the IPCC was
02:09 way too optimistic in its projection. And what's interesting is that they attribute
02:13 this discrepancy in the data to the fact that we don't have as much access to Russian data
02:18 right now. And as you can see, Russia is englobing most of the Arctic and they stopped doing
02:23 the explorations since the beginning of the Ukrainian war.
02:26 And Julia, how much of the surface area of sea ice has already shrunk in the Arctic?
02:32 So it's been reduced by 9% in the winter and by 48% in the summer. And we know that compared
02:38 to the satellite pictures that we have from 1979, we're still using satellite imagery
02:43 to try to monitor the situation of the sea ice with satellites like CRIOSAT-2 and Copernicus,
02:51 for instance. And also, so maybe we'll be able to see this, but there is a huge difference
02:57 indeed here in the Arctic sea ice, the difference between winter, of course, and summer in the
03:03 Arctic, in the Antarctic as well. But once again, this is sea ice that is supposed to
03:07 retrieve also in the summer. And Julia, I suppose the big question is,
03:12 what are the consequences of this ice melting? So what's interesting is that the melting
03:18 of the sea ice, we could think that it would make the sea level rise, but it's actually,
03:22 it doesn't cause directly the sea levels to rise, but it does have negative consequences.
03:27 And the most negative consequences, the fact that in the summer, it has a very important
03:32 role to have because it reflects the sunlight. And so this, it functions like a mirror and
03:37 this mirror is becoming smaller and smaller. So it's reflecting less sunlight and because
03:42 of that, the Arctic is becoming warmer. Because the Arctic is becoming warmer, it triggers
03:46 extreme weather events, especially in mid latitudes, like for instance, heat waves and
03:50 wildfires. And on a more global level, it can trigger also the melting and it is triggering
03:55 the melting of the permafrost and Greenland ice sheets, which in that case do trigger
04:02 an increase in the sea level. All right, really serious stuff. Thanks very
04:05 much indeed for coming in to highlight that for us. Julia Seager for us there.