The ice floating on top of the world covers pretty much the entire Arctic Ocean in midwinter. By late summer it shrinks to half that much. If trends continue, by mid-century the summer ice may take up less space than Japan.<\/p>\n
As the Arctic Ocean becomes more blue, it absorbs much of the sun\u2019s heat that it once reflected with great efficiency. This warmer ocean would quicken the melt of the Greenland ice cap, which would lead to sea level rise. It might encourage wacky weather patterns all over the globe.<\/p>\n
Since satellites first allowed us to watch sea ice in the late 1970s, the jigsaw puzzle has shrunk as the years have passed, with a low point reached in late summer 2012. Some scientists thought that year might have been a tipping point from which the ice would not recover.<\/p>\n
But the ice is perhaps more resilient than that. Some researchers suggest northern sea ice can bounce back and continue its role as refrigerator of the world.<\/p>\n
Stephanie Pfirman of Columbia University shared a vision for restoring sea ice at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco last month. More than 20,000 scientists attend the weeklong meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome models say the Arctic Ocean will be almost ice free (during summer) as soon as 2030 to 2040,\u201d she said in San Francisco. \u201cBut it could return. When the Arctic cools, the ice will return.\u201d<\/p>\n
But with record levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and a steady climb in world temperatures, how could the Arctic get colder?<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you take the CO2 out of the atmosphere, the ice will come back,\u201d said Pfirman\u2019s colleague Robert Newton, a geochemist at Columbia.<\/p>\n
What will it take to lower carbon dioxide levels? <\/p>\n
\u201cTo get the ice back before it\u2019s gone completely, we definitely need decarbonization and CO2 removal,\u201d Pfirman said, referring to political and mechanical solutions for reducing emissions or pulling carbon out of the air.<\/p>\n
Newton said he thinks the world will come around to the preservation of a white Arctic when climate change makes it clear there is no other option.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up in the Cold War \u2014 a time when people worried about mutually assured (nuclear) destruction,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we didn\u2019t go there. I think this is going to be something like that. I really believe in my heart we will do this. But not before a lot of human and ecological damage takes place.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there will be a time when consequences will be large enough that (carbon reductions) will happen,\u201d said Bruno Tremblay, a sea ice expert who works at McGill University and was also at the meeting. \u201cIt\u2019s going to need to be a quick and forceful commitment\u201d to get atmospheric carbon dioxide levels back to 350 parts per million from the current 401 parts per million as measured at Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii.<\/p>\n
Tremblay mentioned the recent United Nations Paris meeting on climate change as an encouraging sign, though he thinks the action will happen at more nimble state, community and personal levels.<\/p>\n
The trio of scientists echoed others at the giant meeting who expressed hope that people are paying attention to the unprecedented level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Those are people who might be convinced that keeping ice on top of the world is important for humans as well as polar bears and walrus.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we can turn the corner,\u201d Pfirman said. \u201cI think people will notice the value of the Arctic . . . We can innovate our way out of this.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks\u2019 Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The ice floating on top of the world covers pretty much the entire Arctic Ocean in midwinter. By late summer it shrinks to half that much. If trends continue, by mid-century the summer ice may take up less space than Japan. As the Arctic Ocean becomes more blue, it absorbs much of the sun\u2019s heat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":30032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[149],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-30031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-outdoors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30031"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=30031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}