Limiting Warming to 1.5C Could ‘Substantially’ Cut Risk of Ice-Free Arctic Summers

Meeting the Paris Agreement’s aspirational target of limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels could “substantially” reduce the risk of sea ice-free summers in the Arctic, research shows. Two new studies find that, under 1.5C of warming, Arctic waters could experience ice-free summers around 2.5% of the time, or one in every 40 years.

Let it Go: The Arctic will Never be Frozen Again

Last week, at a New Orleans conference center that once doubled as a storm shelter for thousands during Hurricane Katrina, a group of polar scientists made a startling declaration: The Arctic as we once knew it is no more. The region is now definitively trending toward an ice-free state, the scientists said, with wide-ranging ramifications for ecosystems, national security, and the stability of the global climate system.

The Impacts Of An Ice Free Arctic: A Climate Paradigm Shift?

The paper “Mitigation implications of an ice-free summer in the Arctic Ocean”[4] provides estimates for the effect of an ice-free Arctic in the month of September in 2050 and 2040. As the paper comments, the possibility of an early loss in arctic sea ice has not been included in any of the Integrated Assessment Models used to assess the societal impacts of climate change.