End to summer sea ice predicted by 2050 in new report
The International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI) has released a new report at COP27: State of the Cryosphere: Growing Losses, Global Impacts. The report, authored and reviewed by more than 60 leading cryosphere scientists, details how melting polar ice, glacier loss, and permafrost thaw will have rapid and irreversible effects that will impact us all.
The ICCI was formed in 2009 after the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change summit COP15 in Copenhagen, as a network of senior policy experts and researchers working with governments and organisations. Together, they form and implement initiatives for the protection of the Earth’s cryosphere. The State of the Cryosphere report updates the latest cryosphere science, and reveals the reality of the worsening global impacts of rapid changes in the world’s frozen regions.
One of the headlines of the report is the reported ‘terminal diagnosis’ for summertime Arctic sea ice, which is expected to be lost by 2050. Arctic sea ice is a crucial part of the Arctic climate and environment. It assists in maintaining the Earth’s albedo, reflecting warming sunlight, and it also provides key habitat for Arctic species such polar bears and walruses, and maintains the food webs operating in this region such as hosting sea ice algae.
The reality of a terminal decline is highlighted by the fact that the most recent UN IPCC report indicates that summer sea ice would be lost at a global average warming peaking at 1.6 degrees above the pre-industrial average. If this is the upper limit for summer sea ice survival, then its loss is unavoidable, given that the world is currently on track for 2.8 degrees of warming by 2100. Disappearance of Arctic sea ice will also create a darker Arctic ocean as bare ocean waters absorb more solar heat, further escalating warming further, and disrupting the region’s ecosystems.
The 4.5 million people that call the circum-Arctic region home will also be profoundly impacted by these impacts on food sources, ground stability and coastal erosion. Yet, it is not just Arctic residents that will feel these effects. The rapid loss of ice across the Earth’s cryosphere is impacting communities globally, with coastal sea-level rise, water shortages downstream of shrinking glaciers and snowpack, floods, avalanches, wildfires and extreme weather events.
The report also highlights other thresholds of change, with March rains on East Antarctica, with temperatures 40°C above normal, a September spike in Greenland surface melt for the first time, loss of over 5% of glacier ice in the Alps over a single summer, and the first documented rise in methane release due to global warming from a permafrost monitoring site. As waters warm and more CO2 becomes dissolved in the oceans, this is also leading to evidence of ocean acidification, resulting in greater shell damage in parts of the Arctic Ocean. An apparent dramatic crash of 90% of snow crab populations is also likely tied to warming waters.
The report drives home the message that we are, right now, within the risk zone for irreversible damage from continued loss of the planet’s global ice stores. The world’s latest NDCs from the world’s nations (Nationally determined contributions; efforts by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change), still amount to a 10% increase in emissions by 2030. With no sign of the 45% decrease in emissions needed by 2030 to keep 1.5°C within reach, crucial action is taken to avoid impending ice shelf collapses in Antarctica and breakdown of the ice systems in Greenland that will lead to catastrophic sea level rise.
The report provides a stark insight into the reality of the health of the world’s frozen regions, and their fate if the world’s governments do not do more to reduce emissions and their resulting impacts on global average temperatures and Earth’s physical and biological systems. The will determine the fate of the world’s bodies of ice.
Read more in the full ICCI Report, State of the Cryosphere: Growing Losses, Global Impacts.
