The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report, released in 2007, forecast an ice-free Arctic summer by 2100.
But that might happen much earlier, according to research by Pierre Rampal from MIT's department of Earth, Atmosphere and Planetary Sciences, says an MIT news release on research to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research — Oceans.
IPCC models focused on changes in temperature, which are one way to lose or gain ice.
But Rampal said wind and ocean currents also batter the ice, causing it to break up. And ice that's in small pieces behaves differently than ice in one large mass.
Wind and currents also play a significant role in winter, when they can cause "drastic effects" on the ice's shape and movement, he said.
As today's Arctic Ocean winter ice cover is thinner, it breaks up more easily under the influence of winds and currents. So, eventually it looks like an "ensemble of floes" instead of one large mass, Rampal said. Read the full report here.
Source: The Vancouver Sun, Iqaluit.
