The First Arctic Summer Without Ice Is Coming in Just 15 Years
New models convinced a team of scientists to move up projections for the first summer in 130,000 years without sea ice.
Earth as seen from a distance of one million miles by a NASA scientific camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory.
Source: NASAThere’s a standard image of the Earth as seen from space that we carry in our heads: vast blue seas, green bands of forests, and frozen white caps on the top and bottom. By the summer of 2035, it may not be accurate. Scientists estimate that in just 15 years Arctic summer sea-ice could disappear for the first time since primitive humans left Africa.
“The point is, this is happening soon,” says Maria-Vittoria Guarino, an Earth system modeler at the British Antarctic Survey and lead author of a study published earlier this month in the journal Nature Climate Change. “We will have less and less time to get ready for it, or less time to act upon it if we want to do something about it.”