STEM News: Disappearing Arctic Summer Sea Ice

By the year 2035, there may be no more sea ice in the Arctic Ocean during the summer. Global warming in the Arctic occurs twice as fast as elsewhere on the planet. Since the preindustrial period, average temperatures in the Arctic have increased by 3.5 to 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2 to 3 degrees Celsius) compared to 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) on the rest of the planet.

The rate of temperature increase is also accelerating in the Arctic as 1.35 degrees Fahrenheit (0.75 degrees Celsius) of the temperature increase has occurred in the last decade. This July there was the least amount of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean since records were kept in 1979. Only 2.8 million square miles of sea ice covered the Arctic Ocean in July compared to an average of 3.8 million square miles in the 1980s during the same period of the year. Furthermore, there was an unprecedented heatwave in the Arctic that caused which was 600 times more likely due to climate change caused by human activity. To predict when there will no longer be summer sea ice in the Arctic researchers are designing models based on what occurred during the Last Interglacial period when the average temperature in the Arctic rose by 7 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit (4 to 5 degrees Celsius). These forecasts predict that Arctic sea ice will disappear by 2035 and that even intense action cannot reverse the point where summer sea ice will be gone in the Arctic. Source:

Arctic Summer Sea Ice Could Disappear As Early As 2035, Alejandra Borunda, National Geographic Image Source:

Photo by Danting Zhu on Unsplash