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The Arctic Ocean Could Be 'Ice-Free' Within the Decade, Researchers Warn (latimes.com) 117

The loss of Arctic sea ice has long been a graphic measure of human-caused climate change, with wrenching images of suffering polar bears illustrating a worsening planetary crisis. Now, new research has found that Arctic Ocean sea ice is shrinking even faster than previously thought -- and that the Arctic may start to see its first "ice-free" days within the current decade. From a report: That troubling milestone could occur before the end of the decade or sometime in the 2030s -- as many as 10 years earlier than previous projections, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Reviews Earth and Environment. The study defines "ice-free" as when the Arctic Ocean has less than 1 million square kilometers, or 386,000 square miles, of ice.

By midcentury -- 2035 to 2067 -- the Arctic could see consistent ice-free conditions in September, the month when sea ice concentrations are typically at their minimum, the study found. The precise timing of such losses depends on how soon humanity is able to reduce fossil fuel emissions that are contributing to global warming. Under a high-emission scenario in which fossil fuel use continues unabated, the Arctic would be ice-free between the months of May and January by 2100, the study says. Even under a low-emission scenario, the Arctic would still be ice-free between August and October by that same year.

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The Arctic Ocean Could Be 'Ice-Free' Within the Decade, Researchers Warn

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  • I live in Canada and I shovel snow, buy warn things and pay for heating. When I read such news, the only thought which comes to my mind it is finally!, I just need to wait another mere 10 years and my heating bill will go down, our lakes resorts would be opened all year round, I'll be able to build summer cottage up north. The Toronto elevation is 76 meters above sea level, so I don't give a shit about NYC. Great News!
    • by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @04:41PM (#64292404)
      Is Canada prepared for the influx of 10s of millions of US climate refugees?
      • by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @05:17PM (#64292532)

        Is Canada prepared for the influx of 10s of millions of US climate refugees?

        I think you mean 10's of millions of US climate liberators.

        • I don't think most US citizens will want to stay up there, once they realize there is nothing like the US constitution that guarantee citizen rights.

          Being able to be arrested for speech would be a big red flag for me and many others.

          I'd get tagged with that within a day or two up there without even trying....

          • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
            Well when it's officially annexed into the US after a very short war and all the Canadians are put on reservations, I assume the US constitution will apply.
          • by dryeo ( 100693 )

            It's true, our Freedom of Expression right has limits, things like National Security, obscenity, bribing politicians, and such unlike America where the Constitution has no exceptions, simple the Congress shall make no law abridging speech. At least here, we've never executed people for what they said or wrote down.

      • Yes, Canada always welcomes new immigrants! But, be ready that exchange rate is going to be in range from 0.15 up to 0.35 max
      • Climate refugees :D

        OMG thats the funniest thing I have heard all my life.

        Humans migrate all the time like everything else. The weather got stuck the way it has been for a while, was much colder in the past and them way hotter too, yet we still lived.

        The only thing that will have any problems are artificai constructs that are inflexible to a migration need, like governments and economies. Sure we hold those things dear but at the end of the day they mean nada.

        We stayed in huge cities for ages, we had it ea

      • "Build the wall"?

    • Yeah, fuck all the literally billions of people whose lives and livelihoods are based on the climate being what is has been since the dawn of civilization.
      • by Anonymous Coward

        And if the situation was reversed - those people getting some benefit, while I got more problems, they would not care about me at all. So yeah, I don't care about them as well.

      • And where would that be?

        Look up the history of the Sahara

        • To be fair, the Sahara has been a desert for the entirety of human civilization.
          However, humans were indeed alive when it was not one.
          • by Muros ( 1167213 )
            Not quite. Paleolake Mega-Chad's largest extent was around 7000 years ago, so there was some overlap.
            • Human civilization is generally regarded to have started ~5000ya.
              I don't not believe there was any overlap with what is generally regarded human civilization. Humans definitely existed though.
              • There's some evidence of civilization in the Northeastern Sahara- that was abandoned about 9000 years ago as the climate began to change.

              • by Muros ( 1167213 )

                Human civilization is generally regarded to have started ~5000ya.

                No, "civilization" is generally regarded to have started when people started building towns. Recent archaeological finds have pushed that back to around 11 thousand years ago, but if you want to go with solid, established history, then Sumer was around 6500 years ago.

                • Wrong answer.

                  Your definition of "civilization" is not the held by even a minority of anthropologists.
                  The people that became Sumer were in the area 6.5kya, however the first city states arose ~5kya.
                  The first evidence of writing from the Sumerian culture was 4.6kya.

                  Try again.
      • So the climate hasn't changed sine the dawn of civilization? When was the last ice age, and what caused it, assuming it occurred before the dawn of the Industrial Revolution...

        • No, it... really hasn't. Civilization, that we recognize as organization on a scale larger than an individual tribe or clan, arose about 5-6 thousand years ago in several areas around the Fertile Crescent. The total change in world average temperature between then and 1900 is about +1*C, most of that being nearer to 5kya as part of the last tail of the end of the ice age - less than the change in the last 70 years. The consistent relative warmth since the dawn of civilization is called the Holocene Climatic
    • I agree. Given the problems in the Panama Canal, an ice-free Arctic Ocean would be a HUGE boon to shipping across the top of the world.

  • What year? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cirby ( 2599 ) on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @04:35PM (#64292386)

    ...because it was supposed to be ice-free by 2015, from past predictions.

    • Re:What year? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by internetd00du ( 7659518 ) on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @04:50PM (#64292440)

      Just because one prediction didn't work out doesn't invalidate all the data that shows declining ice.

      • Re:What year? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by CAIMLAS ( 41445 ) on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @05:06PM (#64292502)

        No, but it draws into question the judgement and capabilities of the people making those predictions. Given how highly specialized this study is and how many advanced models and such they've got to try to make these inferences, it certainly makes a person wonder.

        MRI machines used to determine all sorts of things about human nature are quite like that: highly complex with a lot of interpretation involved. It's how we supposedly know which part of the brain certain types of thinking occur, and so on. Some of those findings are... highly suspect. A scientist once did something like use an MRI of a bowl of rice (or something equally silly) to demonstrate how heavily interpretive the field is - using the same techniques to infer something "human" about the inanimate item he scanned.

        Climate study is much like that: looking for a meaningful pattern in the snow of an eternal TV screen.

        • by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @06:59PM (#64292860) Homepage

          Pay attention to that weasel-word, "could be". Whenever the prediction includes a range (and real science always includes a range, that's the error bars), the media grabs onto the worst possible case and headlines it. Here the scare headline is "could be ice free within the decade"! The actual paper [nature.com] says:

          In the September monthly mean, 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.

          Yow. The likely to occur prediction is "by 2050", but the scare headline is the shortest timeframe.

          It continues:

          However, daily September ice-free conditions are expected approximately 4years earlier on average, with the possibility of preceding monthly metrics by 10years. Consistently ice-free September conditions (frequent occurrences of an ice-free Arctic) are anticipated by mid-century (by 2035–2067).

        • by pjt33 ( 739471 )

          I don't know whether anyone has published MRI results from a bowl of rice, but the famous one which won an IgNobel prize involved fMRI of a dead salmon [uni-rostock.de]. Note that the conclusion wasn't that the field is "heavily interpretive": it was that statistical analyses which perform many tests need to account for the fact that they're performing many tests. See also: oblig. XKCD [xkcd.com].

        • Climate study is much like that: looking for a meaningful pattern in the snow of an eternal TV screen.

          So your argument is as follows. First give an anecdotal example of some bad science. Second note that climate science is a science. Last you conclude that climate science is bad.

          It seems you acknowledge that climate science is specialized and advanced presumably taking many years of study for any type of meaningful contribution. It seems you don't have that background, and therefore you draw on some

      • Just because one prediction didn't work out doesn't invalidate all the data that shows declining ice.

        Declining ice is a measurable, testable data-point. Future predictions, based mostly on speculative fictions drummed up through climate models that pre-suppose some weird logarithmic escalation of decades-long trends, leave a little more to be desired. And, as has been shown time and time again, rarely work out to be true.

        I hate to say it, because someone will probably label me a climate-change denier for it, but sometimes the prognosticators do more damage to their own supposed cause than if they'd just tr

        • Re:What year? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @07:18PM (#64292898) Homepage

          Just because one prediction didn't work out doesn't invalidate all the data that shows declining ice.

          Declining ice is a measurable, testable data-point. Future predictions, based mostly on speculative fictions drummed up through climate models that pre-suppose some weird logarithmic escalation of decades-long trends, leave a little more to be desired.

          They leave "a little more to be desired" because the media routinely mis-quotes predictions to make them scarier.

          The most cited example is where the media mis-quoted Al Gore (not a climate scientist) as having said the arctic would be ice free in five to seven years (leaving out his actual words "some of the models suggest that")... but Gore was himself mis-quoting the actual climate scientist (who did not put a timeframe onto the prediction of sea ice melting). See here: https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com] or here: https://www.npr.org/sections/t... [npr.org]

          So, a prediction that some models suggest that the arctic would be ice free (at some unspecified point in the future) turned into a prediction that some models said it would be ice free in five to seven years, which in turn turned into a prediction that the arctic would be ice free in five years.

          And, as has been shown time and time again, rarely work out to be true.

          Yes, but what has been shown time and time again is the media mis-representing predictions, which turn out not to be true.

          I hate to say it, because someone will probably label me a climate-change denier for it, but sometimes the prognosticators do more damage to their own supposed cause than if they'd just tried to be open and honest about what we're actually living through.

          If you want that, look at what the scientists actually say, and not the popular press, which always goes for the scare.

      • Correct, it's not just one, it's that all the environment disaster predictions haven't turned out true. Name one.

        • The Aral Sea dried up just as predicted. It was a man made ecological disaster. I'm old enough to remember the predictions of doom then the reports of it's shrinkage over the years.

          • C'mon, the Aral sea?

            Us kids in a 1990's geography lesson predicted that! It wasnt rocket science. The whole problem was caused by idiots who didnt model the inputs vs the new outputs, basically the increased surface area for evapouration.

      • by taustin ( 171655 )

        How about when every prediction of global doom [agweb.com] has turned out to be not just wrong, but hilariously wrong? Every time. How about then?

        • by Anonymous Coward
          Mmmm. These cherries are delicious!
      • Just because one prediction didn't work out doesn't invalidate all the data that shows declining ice.

        I don't doubt the trend. Just the headline.

      • It invalidates everything.

        If you have the wrong date then you either have:

        - Bad data
        - Bad collection methods
        - Bad processes
        - Unknown variables
        - Or have seen signs that the hypothesis is false.

        The scientific method aims to prove or disprove a hypothesis in a repeatable way. If you make a hypothesis and it is proven wrong, then everything else is wrong too. You must start again.

        Climate science did away with that because it was too inconvenient and didnt make enough money. Now if the hypothesis is wrong the

      • Well, before that, IIRC, it was 2000.
    • by GoJays ( 1793832 )
      Remember when Kilimanjaro was going to be snow free by 2020 according to many media outlets? Well, I climbed Kilimanjaro in February 2020, a couple weeks before the pandemic hit. The summit was covered in knee deep snow with glaciers that were multiple stories thick. It was about -10c not including windchill on the summit. I don't doubt that the glaciers are melting currently, but that's what glaciers do, they have grown and shrunk throughout history.
      • Re:What year? (Score:5, Informative)

        by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @05:28PM (#64292580)

        Remember when Kilimanjaro was going to be snow free by 2020 according to many media outlets? Well, I climbed Kilimanjaro in February 2020, a couple weeks before the pandemic hit. The summit was covered in knee deep snow with glaciers that were multiple stories thick. It was about -10c not including windchill on the summit. I don't doubt that the glaciers are melting currently, but that's what glaciers do, they have grown and shrunk throughout history.

        No, I remember predictions that the ice cover on the volcano's western slopes will disappear by 2020, and the ice fields in the plateau will be gone by 2040 [nbcnews.com], a very different prediction (though I can't actually find out whether it came true).

        But like most glaciers nowadays the shrinkage is massive and unprecedented [wikipedia.org].

        • by GoJays ( 1793832 )

          Let me refresh your memory:

          • Re:What year? (Score:4, Informative)

            by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @08:21PM (#64293000)

            Let me refresh your memory:

            As far as I can tell those are all based on one study that isn't actually linked in any of your articles.

            Did an erroneous study claim Kilimanjaro would be entirely ice free by 2020? Possibly, in science the predictions that are the most wrong are often the ones that become most prominent (because they're so surprising and newsworthy).

            I suspect it's more likely that some study made a much more moderate claim, such as glaciers would be significantly reduced by 2020, or Kilimanjaro will be snow free at some point, and 2020 was the earliest possible such date. And of course the most extreme version of that is what everybody talked about.

            I mean literally look at the summary here. Everyone is acting like this is a projection it will be ice-free by 2035, and the title even says "within the decade", which would be even earlier in 2034!

            But the study is actually projecting it will be between 2035 and 2065, if the date is actually 2035 it means their prediction was not that great.

            The study was literally published today and it's already being spun into an unrealistic scenario.

      • Remember when Kilimanjaro was going to be snow free by 2020 according to many media outlets?

        One obviously wrong study was picked up and amplified by media. What's your point? Are you not smart enough to know that happens? Were you upset that this amplified incorrect prediction didn't come true?

        Well, I climbed Kilimanjaro in February 2020, a couple weeks before the pandemic hit. The summit was covered in knee deep snow with glaciers that were multiple stories thick. It was about -10c not including windchill on the summit.

        Uh, a small fraction of Kilimanjaro is still glaciated.

        I don't doubt that the glaciers are melting currently, but that's what glaciers do, they have grown and shrunk throughout history.

        Of course they have. Climate fluctuates over time.
        Right now, the fluctuation is us.
        We're not talking +/- 10% here. The glaciers on Kilimanjaro have shrunk by over 90% since the turn of 20th century.

    • by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      Also 2010. And...

      Even people with a short memory are getting tired of the goal posts being moved.

      It's also telling when they very carefully couch what they say. What of the Antarctic ice? What is special and exceptional about the Arctic Ocean, and does it have anything to do with the 30-miles-a-year pole shift currently occurring?

      I can't imagine the Arctic Ocean not being in the same position relational to the North Pole anymore would have much impact on the ice levels there... not at all.

      • > the 30-miles-a-year pole shift currently occurring

        They'll try to pin that down to human activity too given half the chance. If they could prove that all the magnets in all the motors and generators and the total magnetic flux of human cities etc is causing the poles to shift, which will screw up the birds migration patterns and result in extinctions etc they will be jumping for joy.

    • Re:What year? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @05:16PM (#64292528)

      ...because it was supposed to be ice-free by 2015, from past predictions.

      You mean this dude [theguardian.com]? He's apparently an expert on sea ice, but not climate [wikipedia.org], and his statements didn't seem to be based on research but his personal gut feeling (and personal attachment to sea ice). It sounds like he mostly wanted to make some headlines.

      It looks like the actual climate models [wikipedia.org] have always talked about ice-free conditions happening sometime between the 2030s and the 2050s. So this latest study doesn't seem like a big departure.

    • I remember when there was enough pack ice you could walk North America to Asia over the North Pole in the winter. 20-30 years on and that's not possible anymore.
    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Sure it was. No error bars or anything, just 2015.

    • It was Al Gore in 2009:

      https://www.cbsnews.com/news/g... [cbsnews.com]

    • Indeed, people have been predicting this 'within the decade' for more than a decade by now.

  • by sarren1901 ( 5415506 ) on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @04:41PM (#64292402)

    If all that pesky ice goes away, that will make it safer for shipping and open up new routes. Got to look on the bright side and stop being so negative.

    • by gtall ( 79522 ) on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @05:06PM (#64292504)

      Unless it means that Greenland melts. Then most of the Eastern seaboard will be part of the Atlantic Ocean. The Arctic tundra being exposed means a lot more methane in the atmosphere. So if we're luck, we'll escape a runaway greenhouse effect. But if we are unlucky, and science is certainly saying we'll be unlucky, then your grandkids will be living in Hell.

      • > So if we're luck, we'll escape a runaway greenhouse effect.

        Based on the fact that methane breaks down pretty quickly into CO2 and there isn't really all that much of it compared to CO2... you're looking at a decade or so where it has a significant effect and then hundreds of years where it's just a bit more CO2 added to what we've already released.

        It won't take luck to escape a runaway greenhouse effect, the planet's been hotter and had more CO2 before without turning into Venus. The Sun is not THAT m

        • > So if we're luck, we'll escape a runaway greenhouse effect.

          ...It won't take luck to escape a runaway greenhouse effect,

          Accurate.

          No atmospheric scientists that I know (and I do know atmospheric scientists) predict that we'll get a runaway greenhouse effect with a Venus-like atmosphere (at least, not in the next hundred million years or so).

          the planet's been hotter and had more CO2 before without turning into Venus. The Sun is not THAT much brighter, either.

          Agree. The history of the Earth includes long periods of time when the climate was much warmer than today, and the planet had no polar ice caps.

          We are still looking at a severe climate disruption that will definitely bring bits of Hell to us and our descendants, but it's not the end of life as we know it just yet.

          Agree here as well; rising temperatures will cause disruption (arguably "bits of hell") but not the end of life as we know it.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Stoutlimb ( 143245 )

            Northern Greenland had camels and deciduous trees before the last ice age. For all we know it had a huge thriving human population. Most likely people did live there. We will never know. Considering we should be nearing an ice age if we didn't release all this carbon, I'm totally OK with global warming. We have a long way to go as far as historical temperatures go, and I'm not concerned if there will be winners and losers, that's normal for history, and people have plenty of warning not to buy ocean fr

      • Is that a bug or a feature?
    • Yippie! Faster shipping from Temu!!! Maybe try thinking about all the people of the Arctic who don't care about online shopping like a billionaire and are seeing their way of life vanish.
      • Maybe try thinking about all the people of the Arctic who don't care about online shopping like a billionaire and are seeing their way of life vanish.

        OTOH I'm profoundly glad I don't live just like my great great grandparents did. Of course even these people living in the north now have snowmobiles, outboards, rifles, propane and electricity among myriad other modern things. Their "traditional way of life" has adapted greatly, and will continue to do so. Not sure how concerned we should be with keeping people from having to adapt at all, it is not realistic.

      • by PPH ( 736903 )

        seeing their way of life vanish

        [Sniff] I miss big cars with tail fins. What about me?

  • by webjive ( 10437302 )
    They've been saying this for decades. Spinning up the same crap over and over.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @04:47PM (#64292426)

    Probably won't, though. This paper is so hedged that its implications are not clear. The line "if it goes ice-free at all" was found in there.

    Sensationalist headlines from such a weak sauce paper are...propaganda.

  • by AnotherBlackHat ( 265897 ) on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @05:34PM (#64292594) Homepage

    http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2023/10/monthly_ice_09_NH_v3.0-1.png [nsidc.org]
    Looks to me like the "normally ice-free" projection would be about 45 hence, around 2070.

    I realize this is not a sophisticated model, but I guess those slackers at the NSIDC are not willing to stay up to date with the latest theories, preferring outdated things like actual measurements.

  • The Arctic Ocean Could Be 'Ice-Free' Within the Decade? Didn't they say that 10 years ago? It wasn't true then, and it still isn't true. In fact, based on the pattern of sunspots over the last 50 years, we can expect a COOLING trend over the next 40-50 years.

    Climate change is real, and it's happening, but it's a CYCLE 1000+ years long. It's been this hot, and hotter, before; at the peak of the last cycle, the Vikings had dairy farms on Greenland - which was, at the time, a green land, which was why Leif

    • Climate change is real, and it's happening, but it's a CYCLE 1000+ years long

      We are more powerful than the 1000 year cycle. Nature would have coughed up those fossil fuels eventually, and maybe even burned them, but it would have happened a lot slower since the rate would be limited by plate tectonics.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Nope. Stop lying.

  • You mean the images of Polar Bears standing on a floating bit of ice?

    Which they actually use as a hunting technique? As the seals totally have no idea the little ice berg is in hunting mode...

    Funny how with all the terrible calamities that beset these bears that they suddenly have huge population increases, almost like living in a harsh cold environment somehow make life hard and a warmer envionment might actually work better to sustain them.

    But of course, the lonley hunting, no sorry, marooned bear on the

  • ...underwater, conservatives will deny climate change or at least invent excuses do to anything about it.

    And even when Lago is underwater, Don will claim it's because the Deep Dems didn't bother to rake the oceans.

  • Now, I'm not here to argue about global warming or any of that.

    I just want to point out that when you get to redefine terms to not mean what the reasonable reader might think, you can always be right:

    The study defines "ice-free" as when the Arctic Ocean has less than 1 million square kilometers, or 386,000 square miles, of ice.

    I mean, I could sell ice cream and advertise it as "turd free", but define "turd free" as contains less than one dog turd per 5 gallons of ice cream. But defining it that way sure doe

  • "Global sea ice extent was the seventh-smallest in the 46-year record at 6.90 million square miles, or 440,000 square miles below the 1991-2020 average, for the winter month"

    https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
    Yes, it is ABSOLUTELY decreasing over time. No question.
    But just taking the linear slope of the average, we're talking like....3 centuries before it's zero. (16.4 million to 14.4 million over 44 years = reduction of about 46000/year.)

    Oh, and that's assuming NO diminishing returns on the warming of the r

  • Um, this same thing has been repeated decade after decade.

  • The sooner we kill ourselves off, the sooner the planet can get back to healing itself. Should only take on the order of a couple million years after we're gone.

    So, if you are a true environmentalist, you should be burning everything you can; drilling all the oil you want; acting like a good consumer.
  • Isn't this a re-run of an Al Gore prediction that was overdue?

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