Researchers at the University of Gothenburg believe that plans used by the UN and other organizations to guess how much the Earth’s temperature will change in the future are not correct when it comes to predicting the Arctic. They think it will get much hotter there than previously estimated.
The severe weather and a lot of sea ice in the Arctic makes it difficult to collect enough data there, so scientists do not have as many facts as they would like. This means the climate models used to try and predict what will happen in the future are not perfected yet.
Recently, research from the University of Gothenburg did two studies where they compared what the climate models said about warming up the Arctic Ocean with actual observations. They figured out that it will get warmer more quickly than scientists thought before.
Latest Study Exposes Surprising Impact of Global Warming on Arctic Ocean Sea Ice Melting
Experts say that current climate models don’t paint a complete picture of climate change. The waters around the Arctic are warmer than thought, meaning that the sea ice in this region is melting away faster than predicted. Céline Heuzé, from the University of Gothenburg, authored one of the studies on this topic.
A lot of warm water from the Atlantic Ocean flows into the Arctic Ocean through Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard. But, in climate models, the amount of this water and its temperature are not quite accurate. The layers in the Arctic Ocean also have an incorrect level in these models. Scientists said that since half of the models show an increase while the other half showed a decrease in how many levels there were, it’s hard to predict what global warming may do.
Exploring the Arctic Ocean
This is a bad issue. If people all around the world want to trust climate models, they have to make them better. So it’s important to do research in the Arctic Ocean and collect more data. Right now, we can’t tell how quickly sea ice is melting in the Arctic. That’s why Céline Heuzé says we need more research there.
The Arctic is really important, because it can help us predict how bad global warming will get in the future. The sea ice in this region reflects sunlight away from the planet like a big white mirror, which helps slow down climate change. But without that sea ice, more heat from the sun would reach the Earth and make global warming worse.
Céline Heuzé says that we need a special climate model for the Arctic. We can’t use just one single model to cover the entire planet as different places have completely different climates. A better idea would be making a unique model for the Arctic, aiming to consider all processes happening in the Arctic Ocean and nearby land areas.
Two research studies have been published on 4 January 2023 and 17 February 2023 about the Arctic Ocean and Fram Strait in CMIP6 Models. The first study was called “The Deep Arctic Ocean and Fram Strait in CMIP6 Models” by Céline Heuzé, Hannah Zanowski, Salar Karam, and Morven Muilwijk. The second one was entitled “Divergence in Climate Model Projections of Future Arctic Atlantification” by Morven Muilwijk, Aleksi Nummelin, Céline Heuzé, Igor V. Polyakov, Hannah Zanowski, and Lars H. Smedsrud.
English 
Español 
Русский 
Deutsch 
Français 
Português