Seasonal sea-ice in the Arctic's last ice area during the Early Holocene
Creators
- 1. Department of Geoscience, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
- 2. Department of Chemistry, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
Description
According to climate models, the Lincoln Sea, bordering northern Greenland and Canada, will be the final stronghold of perennial Arctic sea-ice in a warming climate. However, recent observations of prolonged periods of open water raise concerns regarding its long-term stability. Modelling studies suggest a transition from perennial to seasonal sea-ice during the Early Holocene, a period of elevated global temperatures around 10,000 years ago. Here we show marine proxy evidence for the disappearance of perennial sea-ice in the southern Lincoln Sea during the Early Holocene, which suggests a widespread transition to seasonal sea-ice in the Arctic Ocean. Seasonal sea-ice conditions were tightly coupled to regional atmospheric temperatures. In light of anthropogenic warming and Arctic amplification our results suggest an imminent transition to seasonal sea-ice in the southern Lincoln Sea, even if the global temperature rise is kept below a threshold of 2 °C compared to pre-industrial (1850–1900).
Files
s43247-023-00720-w.pdf
Files
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Additional details
Funding
- IceLab – Ice-ocean interactions during Heinrich Events in the Labrador Sea 882893
- European Commission
- ECOTIP – Arctic biodiversity change and its consequences: Assessing, monitoring and predicting the effects of ecosystem tipping cascades on marine ecosystem services and dependent human systems 869383
- European Commission