The first ice-free day in the Arctic could occur more than 10 years earlier than previous projections, the study finds. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Home of polar bears, seals and walruses could be mostly water for months as early as 2035 due to fossil fuel emissions
The Arctic could have summer days with practically no sea ice within the next decade due to emissions from burning fossil fuels, a study has found.
This would transform the unique habitat, home to polar bears, seals and walruses, from a “white Arctic” to a “blue Arctic” during the summer months, scientists said. The calculation used for “ice free” means less than 1m sq km, in which case the Arctic would be mostly water.
The authors said consistently ice-free Septembers could be expected by 2035 to 2067. The exact year within that period is dependent on how quickly the world reduces the amount of fossil fuels burned.
Activists gathered outside the Norwegian parliament in Oslo during a vote to approve deep-sea mining on January 9, 2024. (Photo: Will Rose/Greenpeace)
“This decision is an irrevocable black mark on Norway’s reputation as a responsible ocean state,” said one critic, warning of environmental impacts.
The Norwegian government came under fire from environmentalists and scientists worldwide on Tuesday after moving to become the first country to enable destructive commercial deep-sea mining.
Stortinget, Norway’s parliament, overwhelmingly voted in favor of allowing exploration of the seabed under the country’s Arctic waters for minerals—an outcome widely expected after center-left parties that control the government struck a deal with right-wing parties last month.
“This decision is an irrevocable black mark on Norway’s reputation as a responsible ocean state,” declared Steve Trent, CEO and founder of the U.K.-based Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), in a statement Tuesday. “Deep-sea mining is a pursuit of minerals we don’t need, with environmental damage that we can’t afford.”
“We can upgrade our economies and get to zero carbon without wrecking the deep ocean in the process.”
“We know so little about the deep ocean, but we know enough to be sure that mining it will wipe out unique wildlife, disturb the world’s largest carbon store, and do nothing to speed the transition to clean economies,” he stressed. “Recent scientific studies in Norwegian waters demonstrate that there will be severe impacts on ocean wildlife if this mining goes ahead.”
Trent continued:
Instead of being the answer to boosting renewable energy, deep-sea mining would be just another form of harmful resource extraction, with steep and needless costs we cannot and should not pay. As the Norwegian government decides to push forward with deep-sea mining, EJF’s latest report reveals that we can upgrade our economies and get to zero carbon without wrecking the deep ocean in the process. New battery technologies are taking off, and there is a ready supply of minerals available now if we improve existing recycling rates. The argument for destroying the deep sea for cobalt and nickel does not withstand scrutiny and Norwegian lawmakers must recognize this.
Chloé Mikolajczak of Europe’s Fossil Free Politics campaign said on social media that “exploration, while different from exploitation, already comes with significant environmental damage. Today, Norway failed the world and failed to protect our future. But the fight can not stop and we’re mobilizing a community of thousands to #StopDeepSeaMining.”
Amanda Louise Helle, who was among the Greenpeace Norway activists protesting outside Stortinget on Tuesday, was similarly determined to continue the battle against deep-sea mining.
“Today our parliament is getting ready to vote in favor of a criminal fate for one of the last safe havens for Arctic marine life,” Helle said ahead of the vote. “Promising to protect the oceans one day and proposing deep-sea mining the next, is next-level hypocrisy. Not only does it risk vulnerable ecosystems in the Arctic, but also Norway’s international reputation.”
“If our politicians are ready to give the Arctic away to greedy companies, then we are more than ready to chase them wherever they plan to deploy their destructive machines,” the campaigner pledged.
#BREAKING: Norway sparks global outrage by approving #DeepSeaMining in the Arctic, endangering the last haven for marine life.
The deep sea is the world's largest carbon reservoir with unique wildlife and important habitats that do not exist anywhere else on Earth. pic.twitter.com/ypA1eO6KB9
Norway’s plan applies to 108,000 square miles of its national waters—”an area bigger than the size of the U.K.,” as the BBC reported Tuesday. “The Norwegian government will not immediately allow companies to start drilling. They will have to submit proposals, including environmental assessments, for a licence which will then be approved on a case-by-case basis by parliament.”
Hundreds of scientists, countries including the U.K., and the European Union have called for a moratorium on deep-sea mining due to environmental concerns. The United Nations-affiliated International Seabed Authority is set to meet later this year to try to finalize global rules about the controversial practice.
A bearded seal on ice off the coast of Alaska. | John Jansen / National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center
The Arctic is rapidly heating up, and that’s already spelled trouble for other parts of the world. 2023 has become the warmest year since 1900, and now, at the Earth’s southernmost point, an iceberg three times the size of Manhattan has broken away—and it’s on the move. When it comes to the ravaging effects of global warming, the world’s poles have proven themselves to be Exhibit A.
On Dec. 12, the annual Arctic Report Card was released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It found that the Arctic is warming four times more quickly than the world’s average, chiefly as a result of climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The effect of that has already been felt south of the region, with Juneau, Alaska, stricken by a glacial outburst flood and Canada enduring a record year of devastating wildfires. Experts say the changes in the Arctic are early signs of what to expect globally as the planet’s temperature continues to increase.
And then there’s A23a. That’s what scientists have called the icy behemoth that was dislodged from an Antarctic ice shelf and—since 2020—has been wending its way through the sea; as of November, it was observed moving past the Antarctic Peninsula’s northern tip and approaching the Southern Ocean. The iceberg is about 1,500 square miles in size. It and other ice shelves are breaking off at rapidly increasing rates due to the climate crisis, and experts are concerned about the implications of its movement.
“It’s just astonishingly big, and it’s a reminder of how much risk we’re at from sea level rise,” said sea scientist Robbie Mallett, an honorary research fellow at the University of College London. “Antarctica has historically been quite a small contributor to sea level rise, but it is growing, and it is taking up a bigger and bigger share of the sea level rise that we see every year. So, it’s a symbol of the growing dominance of Antarctica in the sea rise equation.”
This is such a critical matter because it’s a symptom of a much larger and more worrying issue. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) described it as a “deafening cacophony” of record-breaking that is fueled by global warming, and said that it was putting mankind in jeopardy of losing the fight to control sea level rise.
WMO Secretary-General Professor Petteri Taalas remarked, “We risk losing the race to save our glaciers and to rein in sea level rise. We cannot return to the climate of the 20th century, but we must act now to limit the risks of an increasingly inhospitable climate in this and the coming centuries. Extreme weather is destroying lives and livelihoods on a daily basis, underlining the imperative need to ensure that everyone is protected by early warning services.”
Gail Whiteman, professor of sustainability at the University of Exeter, described it this way: “The Antarctic used to be seen as this sleeping giant, nothing was happening. It was just big and really cold – that’s my non-scientific way of saying it. And now it’s clear based on the sea ice that it is actually destabilizing. The discussion here should be about the polar regions because they are flipping first, and once they do, the issue of adaptation becomes that much more critical.”
Back up north, ice sheets are causing just as much concern; in Greenland, they’re melting. That nation lost an amount of ice in 2022 that could have covered West Virginia in a foot of water, according to reports. The vanishing ice is also creating an unfortunate self-perpetuating cycle: sea ice reflects solar energy back into space, but as it melts, the dark water of the ocean absorbs that heat – meaning that the more it melts, the more quickly the entire process accelerates.
These simultaneous events are, at the end of the day, proof of one thing: “Climate change is not something that’s coming down the pipe somewhere in the future,” said Daniel Schindler, an ecologist at the University of Washington. “Whether you’re talking about fish, or people, or birds, there are going to be real impacts that we need to deal with right now.”
