By SHOKO TAMAKI/ Staff Writer
January 27, 2025 at 08:00 JST
Antarctica, right, is surrounded by a vast area of thick sea ice, left, in this aerial photo taken with a drone along the Antarctic coast in September 2020. (Yumi Nakayama)
The rapidly shrinking sea ice pack in Antarctic waters will likely recover if prompt action is taken to contain greenhouse gas emissions, according to a simulation by an acclaimed team of scientists.
The projection, released on Dec. 20, comes from a team comprised of Syukuro Manabe, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2021, alongside other scientists primarily from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC).
The findings highlight the importance of countermeasures against global warming, as greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are believed to have a grave impact on sea ice.
Though the sea ice pack around the South Pole had steadily expanded up until 2015, its area suddenly plummeted in 2016. The scale of the Antarctic sea ice reached a record low in 2023.
The research team took advantage of a simulation model to research atmospheric and oceanic conditions, so that greenhouse gases’ influence on the future of sea ice off Antarctica could be predicted.
The scientists discovered that if greenhouse gas emissions remain at current levels from now on, the sea ice area will shrink 20 percent, or 3 million square kilometers, by 2100.
Meanwhile, the results also showed that lowering greenhouse gas emissions over the course of three decades from 2030 or 2040 on a continual basis will allow the sea ice pack to start recovering in size within approximately 20 years of the countermeasures’ implementation.
By 2100, the sea ice area is projected to nearly return to its pre-shrinkage level.
According to data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in 2023 was 419 parts per million (ppm). The CO2 level has annually risen by 2.4 ppm since 2010.
“The outcome of our simulation strongly reaffirmed that steps to lessen greenhouse gas emissions should be taken as early as possible,” said Yushi Morioka, a senior researcher specializing in climate dynamics at JAMSTEC. “Rebuilding sea ice in Antarctic waters would become nearly impossible, unless the CO2 concentration is at least lowered to 400 ppm.”
The research findings have been published in the British scientific journal Nature Communications at (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-54485-7).
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