A new study reveals that our greenhouse gas emissions have a greater impact on global warming than predicted by the IPCC.
This is no longer a surprise to anyone, at least outside the dark corners of certain social networks: the sea ice is melting. For decades, the Arctic has served as an example to illustrate our impact on the Earth’s climate. And the more it disappears, the more the scientific community urges societies to do more.
Humanity is responsible for almost all of the ice melting
A recent study, led by Seung-Ki Min of Pohang University in South Korea, has come up with new estimates of Arctic sea ice melt, based on new data. His team’s results add another layer to general alarmism: the sea ice is melting much faster than feared.
Indeed, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) had predicted that the region would lose its summer ice by the 2040s. This new study is even more pessimistic, since it claims that this could happen ten years earlier. This is an interesting landmark, because it is at the end of this season that the pack ice reaches its annual minimum.
To reach this conclusion, Min’s team first looked at the impact of increased greenhouse gases on melting ice compared to other natural factors. Humankind is responsible for 90% of this, researchers say. The rest would be attributable to variations in solar intensity or volcanic eruptions, for example.
” We’re losing control of the pack ice »
Such a large human impact on melting ice means that the efforts required to sufficiently slow global warming may have been underestimated until now. For Min, we need to reduce CO₂ emissions more ambitiously and prepare to adapt to this faster warming of the Arctic “. Indeed, his study establishes that, even if the increase in global temperature is limited to 2°C, summer ice will still have disappeared by 2050.
And the researcher recalls the effects that this will have on our climate: “ an increase in the extreme weather events we are currently experiencing, such as heat waves, wildfires and floods “. Indeed, the melting of the ice leads to changes in the jet stream that crosses the northern hemisphere, a rapid air current that helps regulate the climate in North America, Europe and Asia.
Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, sums it up pretty well: The key message is that we are losing control of the sea ice “. Especially since the more the ocean is exposed, the more heat it absorbs, thus leading to a vicious circle which will be always more difficult and longer to reverse, or even stop.
Of course, this is not about giving up on the energy transition, which is evolving rapidly, because global warming above 2°C could have far more disastrous consequences. However, 2030 is less than ten years away, and on the scale of our society, that means… tomorrow.
Source : The Guardian
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