Research advances date for likely summer ice-free Arctic by a decade
New research has moved up the time by which the Arctic Ocean is predicted to be free of summer ice.
A paper published Tuesday in the journal Nature has concluded that those northern waters could be open for months at a time as early as 2030, even if humanity manages to drastically scale back its greenhouse gas emissions.
“It brings it about a decade sooner,” said Nathan Gillett, an Environment and Climate Change Canada scientist and one of the co-authors of the study.
Gillett and his colleagues had noticed the growing differences between what climate models say should be happening to sea ice and what’s actually going on.