Scientists from South Korea, Canada, and Germany used observational data from the years 1979–2019 to run new simulations.
“That’s about a decade earlier than the most recent projections” from the UN group of climate scientists, explains Seung-Ki Min, a researcher at South Korea’s Pohang and Yonsei Universities and co-author of the paper.
Strictly speaking, the absence of ice implies an area of less than 1 million km2, since residual ice could remain along the coasts.
The Arctic Ocean covers an area of about 14 million square kilometers and is covered in ice for most of the year. September is the month of the year in which the sea ice surface is reduced to the maximum.
The sixth assessment report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published last March, predicts that the Arctic will be practically free of sea ice on average in September, close to mid-century under medium and high emissions scenarios, although not low emissions.
The results of the study highlight “the profound impact of greenhouse gas emissions in the Arctic and demonstrate the importance of planning for and adapting to a seasonally ice-free Arctic in the near future,” the authors write.
In recent decades, Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly in all seasons of the year, with an increasing decline since the year 2000.