The Arctic ice could disappear one day in September of this decade. The event would be specific and could take years to repeat itself. But after 2035, climate change may have advanced enough that the lack of ice will cease to be an occasional phenomenon and become habitual. This is what the latest article published this Tuesday in the journal Nature Reviews Earth concludes.
The work, which considers that the usual lack of Arctic ice will occur for the first time in the month of September between 2035 and 2067, compiles and synthesizes the conclusions of previous studies that have used different methodologies. That is why it constitutes the best estimate to date of a phenomenon that climate models have been warning of since the 1970s.
The frozen surface in the Arctic Ocean varies with the months of the year, and the decreasing minimum is usually reached in September. In 1980 it was 7.5 million square kilometers. In 2023, 4.5. The decline is not gradual, but the minimum extent depends on the conditions of each particular year. The trend, however, is decreasing: the minimum surface area is reduced by 12.2% each decade, according to NASA data. The record was reached in 2012, when it fell below 3.5 square kilometers.
“The first conditions [for an ice-free Arctic] are possible under any emissions scenario” and could occur this decade, says Alexandra Jahn, a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder and one of the authors of the review. That it will happen is almost a certainty: the probability that we will avoid it is less than 10% even in the most optimistic assumption, with global warming below 1.5ºC.
However, the path that global greenhouse gas emissions take from now on will determine the frequency and duration of this lack of ice. “The world's future emissions will lead to fundamentally different Arctic oceans, ranging from 5 months of ice-free conditions each year to occasional frequency,” the expert asserts.
“There is still a lot of ice to save in the Arctic if we can limit global temperature rise to 2ºC or less,” concludes Jahn. In that case, the models suggest that the lack of ice in 2100 will be common in September and occasional in August and October. On the other hand, in an intensive emissions scenario, with a temperature more than 3.5ºC higher than that of the pre-industrial era, the ice-free assumption would cover most of the year, from May to January.
Limiting the time in which the area remains thawed is essential, among other things, to limit global warming itself. Ice reflects light—and therefore heat—from the sun, while the darkness of the ocean absorbs it, so a lack of ice will exacerbate climate change in a feedback loop.
In addition, mammals such as polar bears and seals, which need a frozen surface to survive, will see their way of life threatened, while for some species of fish the melting ice will be an opportunity to colonize new territory. Even boreal forests can gain ground on ice at the northernmost points of continents, according to a recent Science study. All of this is already altering the environment and customs of local indigenous communities today.
The lack of ice will also facilitate human access to a territory on which we have trodden relatively little. The signs follow one another. In 2017, a Russian ship crossed the Arctic without the need for an icebreaker; In 2021, a cargo ship crossed the ocean for the first time in the month of February; even the first arctic cruises have become a reality. All of them are milestones of dubious merit that trigger pollution and human impacts in the area.
The shrinking ice opens up the possibility of opening new faster and potentially cheaper maritime routes for transporting goods, such as the transpolar route, until now practically unused, that crosses the North Pole. It will also allow for longer use of other existing Arctic routes, such as the North Sea route, the busiest, which follows the Russian and Norwegian Arctic coast; or the Northwest Passage, whose use is still residual, which does the same on the shores of Canada and Alaska (United States).
The paradigm shift also opens the door to aggravating conflicts between nations in contact with the area, and even with third actors such as China. “The Arctic was traditionally an area that geostrategically, perhaps due to its inaccessibility, was of little relevance, and now it has come to the foreground of international politics,” Elena Conde, researcher and professor of Public International Law at the University, explains in conversation with La Vanguardia. Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).
The expert, who has analyzed Arctic geopolitics in various publications, points out that the war in Ukraine, together with the thaw, is causing a profound change in the territory's international relations. “Russia has deployed its military forces on all the coasts of the Arctic, and has also used it as a test bed for the most advanced weapons,” she describes. All of this, in the face of a NATO that “has increasingly gotten involved in Arctic issues,” with “military maneuvers that Russia may perceive as threatening.”
The geostrategic shift has also been marked by the United States, which has gone from leaving its interests in the area in the hands of the Canadians to considering the Arctic a great priority, asserts Conde. The White House published the country's strategy in the territory in October 2022. The document “points out Russia and China as the two main competitors in the region, and points it out as a fundamental strategic area, fundamentally linking it to national defense,” summarizes the UCM researcher.
“What was called Arctic exceptionalism, which was a zone of peaceful cooperation, is now in a period of consideration,” concludes the expert. It remains to be seen if the resolution of the situation leads us back to a cooperative framework, or if confrontation ends up prevailing in the region.
