When Will Arctic Sea Ice Be Gone?

• Published in: Latest Thinking
• Main Author: Notz, D.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Global warming; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-002E-0FB5-4

The Arctic sea ice is the ice that is floating on the Arctic Ocean. In recent decades, this pack ice has been disappearing very rapidly. So the question arises when the Arctic sea ice will be completely gone. DIRK NOTZ has examined this using the Arctic summer sea ice in September as example. As he explains in this video, his research group combined satellite observations with model simulations and found a clear linear correlation between the loss of Arctic sea ice and carbon dioxide emissions. For each ton of CO2 we emit, we make about three square meters of Arctic sea ice disappear. From this linear relationship the researchers could extrapolate the amount of carbon dioxide that can still be emitted before the Arctic sea ice is completely gone in summers. For the first time, these findings present very intuitive numbers that make clear the impact every individual has on the global warming.