Will the summer sea ice in the Arctic reach a tipping point?

Abstract

The Arctic sea-ice cover has decreased in extent, area, and thickness over the last six decades. Most global climate models project that the summer sea-ice extent (SIE) will decline to less than 1 million (mill.) km2 in this century, ranging from 2030 to the end of the century, indicating large uncertainty. However, some models, using the same emission scenarios as required by the Paris Agreement to keep the global temperature below 2°C, indicate that the SIE could be about 2 mill. km2 in 2100 but with a large uncertainty of ±1.5 mill. km2. Here, the authors take another approach by exploring the direct relationship between the SIE and atmospheric CO2 concentration for the summer–fall months. The authors correlate the SIE and ln(CO2/CO2r) during the period 1979–2022, where CO2r is the reference value in 1979. Using these transient regression equations with an R2 between 0.78 and 0.87, the authors calculate the value that the CO2 concentration needs to reach for zero SIE. The results are that, for July, the CO2 concentration needs to reach 691 ± 16.5 ppm, for August 604 ± 16.5 ppm, for September 563 ± 17.5 ppm, and for October 620 ± 21 ppm. These values of CO2 for an ice-free Arctic are much higher than the targets of the Paris Agreement, which are 450 ppm in 2060 and 425 ppm in 2100, under the IPCC SSP1-2.6 scenario. If these targets can be reached or even almost reached, the “no tipping point” hypothesis for the summer SIE may be valid.