Arctic tipping points

Abstract

The Arctic is warming much faster than the entire planet, and this causes severe melting of sea ice. However, the climate of different regions of the Earth is interconnected, and changes in the amount of ice in the Arctic can dramatically affect the climate across the whole planet. Some scientists claim that a possible tipping point is the event of the ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer. Certain predictions point towards ice-free Arctic summers around the year 2050, whereas others pre- dict this will occur in 2016. There are also others arguing that only a year-round sea ice loss can represent a tipping point in the Arctic. The disagreement between scientists on this topic is an indication that more detailed studies of tipping points are needed to be done. In this thesis, we use five different models to explore possible tipping points of sea ice loss in the Arctic Ocean. The results show that the tipping point will most probably occur between years 2017 and 2021, with sea ice loss average from 11 million km sq to 4 million km sq during one seasonal cycle.