There is an Arctic region that resists the ravages of climate change.
For a time it was thought that this area was largely protected from global temperature rise, but more recent studies show that it is also is under threat.
This is known as the Last Arctic Ice Area (LIA), a strip of 1 million km2 between Greenland and Canada.
Its name refers that it has the ice cap thicker and older of the Arctic, which, according to predictive models, makes it the area that will remain frozen the longest as the planet warms.
In summer, when part of the Arctic loses its ice, the LIA remains frozen.
“But in the future that will change”Robert Newton, a researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University (USA), tells BBC Mundo.
“In the next few years we will see that during the summer the ice sheet of the LIA will be getting smaller and smaller”.
Newton is co-author of a recent study on the future of the LIA.
“If the ice that remains frozen throughout the year disappears, will be destroyed a whole ecosystem and something new will emerge,” he says.
The consequences of reducing the LIA will be devastating for the species of flora and fauna that inhabit the area, but it will also impact human beings.
What is the LIA and why does part of the future of the planet depend on it?
Eternal ice?
The winds and ocean currents from Siberia to Canada cause the LIA to pile up sheets of ice, creating a thicker, more durable block.
An archipelago belonging to Canada traps that ice, preventing it from leaking to the south and melt in the Atlantic, according to the portal ScienceNews.
Historically the thickness of the ice sheet in the Arctic has been between 2.5 and 3 meters.
In the LIA, the average thickness has been between 6 and 10 meters.
But as the world warms, the Arctic is warming about 2.5 times faster than the rest of the planet, Newton says.
That’s partly because heating creates a vicious circle.
The white surface of the ice reflects the sunlight into space, which keeps the surface cool.
But if that ice melts it accelerates warming, which in turn melt more ice.
Currently the average thickness in the Arctic has fallen below 1.5 m and in the LIA it is close to 4 m.
During the summer, the ice cover becomes less and less.
It currently occupies an area that is less than half than it occupied in the early 1980s, according to Newton’s research.
“The question is how fast will we go from an icy Arctic to a Arctic without icesays the expert.
Possibles scenarios
For Newton, the LIA faces two scenarios.
One of them is the More optimisticand consists of humanity stopping emitting large amounts of CO2, or even managing to apply the technology on a large scale that allows the extraction of CO2 that is already in the atmosphere.
“If we manage to stabilize the temperature close to 2°C above the pre-industrial era, the LIA could have ice all year”, says the expert.
But there is also a stage less optimistic.
“If we continue at the pace of carbon production of the last 50 years, the estimate is that by the middle of the 21st century there will be no summer sea ice cover in the Arctic, including the LIA.”
A recent report by the United Nations Organization estimates that based on current commitments to reduce CO2 emissions, by 2100 the temperature on the planet will be increased 2.7°C.
Under that scenario, the summer ice of the Arctic is doomed to disappear.
shelter of life
Although the Arctic seems like a desolate territory, the truth is that it is home to a large number of Flora and fauna It depends on the ice to survive.
There are well-known animals such as beluga whales, seals and polar bears.
But there is also a world of microscopic life essential for the balance of the ecosystem.
The underwater layer The ice is full of plankton, crustaceans and small fish.
They all have a place in the food chain, and depend on the ice to live and breed.
Newton explains that if the polar ecosystem disappears, other animals that do not depend on the ice will colonize the Arctic.
“It will be a new ecologybut it will take a long time for life to recover in the Arctic”, says the researcher.
Impact to humans
But the consequences are not only for animals.
For the communities that inhabit the Arctic, the ice is fundamental to conserving their food sources and it is part of their culture.
“The world is a place interconnectedNewton says.
“What happens in the Arctic has a high impact in the rest of the planet”.
In various parts of the world more extreme weather events than 20 or 30 years ago, says Newton.
stronger rains, longest stormsgreater droughts, “these events are in part related to the loss of ice in the Arctic.”
The future
Currently one third of the LIA is protected.
In 2019, Canada established an area of 320,000 km2 in which can’t do miningtransport or other types of development for five years.
But the rest of the area is available for exploitation mining.
The Columbia University report warns that the Arctic Ocean and its coasts are home to billions of dollars in oil reserves and mineral deposits such as nickel and copper.
As the amount of water increases in the summer, Columbia experts warn, the pressure to dig, drill and open corridors which would bring contamination to the LIA from possible oil spills and the use of industrial chemicals.
As if all these dangers were not enough, Newton argues that the loss of the LIA would also imply “an emotional cost”.
“Losing the world we know has a strong psychological impactNewton says.
“The Arctic may not be part of what you see when you look out the window, but it is part of the world we live in”.
Source: Eluniverso
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