The ‘last ice zone’ is a narrow strip of ice covering approximately one million square kilometers along the coasts of northern Greenland and the Canadian Arctic archipelago, which has long withstood the effects of climate change, Bye now.
A University of Toronto team found that ice arcs that held frozen water together could soon collapse due to melting, causing large chunks of ice to float south toward warmer regions.
Using satellite images, the researchers observed warming trends showing that ice arcs change and lose mass at twice the rate across the Arctic.
The loss of the last ice zone could alter the entire ecosystem, including ice algae, brine channels, and photogenic species such as polar bears.
Professor Kent Moore, who participated in the study, said: “This very old ice is what worries us.”
“The hope is that this area will persist until the middle of this century or even longer. And then, hopefully, over time we will be able to cool the planet.”
“The ice will grow back and then this area can act as a kind of seed.”
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A team from the University of Toronto found that the ice arcs that hold the last ice zone together could soon collapse due to the melting, causing large chunks of ice to float southward toward more regions. warm.
Ice arcs typically develop at the northern and southern end of the Nares Strait and play an important role in keeping the “last ice zone” in place.
“The Arctic Ocean is evolving into a younger, thinner, more mobile ice pack, and the fate of its multi-year-old ice is becoming increasingly interesting,” says the study published in Nature Communications.
The team used sea ice motion recoveries captured by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellite, which allowed them to record the behavior of ice arcs and changes in the amount of ice.
They used data from ice arcs along the Nares Strait, which is 24 miles wide and 372 miles long.
Using satellite images, the researchers observed warming trends showing that ice arcs change and lose mass at twice the rate of the entire Arctic.
This area runs between Greenland and Ellesmere Island from the Arctic Ocean to Baffin Bay.
“The last ice zone is losing too much ice at twice the rate of the entire Arctic,” Moore said.
“We realized that this area may not be as stable as people think.”
The data show that the duration of arc formation has decreased in the last 20 years and that the mass of ice exported to the Nares Strait has increased.
“It’s really pretty deep to imagine a 100-mile-long ice barrier that stays stationary for months at a time,” Moore said.
“This is more than twice as long as Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana, the world’s longest continuous bridge over water.”
“Talk about the strength of ice.”
However, the strength decreases, warns Moore.
Ice arcs usually develop at the northern and southern ends of the Nares Strait and play an important role in keeping the “last ice zone” in place.
Ice arcs are only part of the year, and when they break in the spring, ice floats through the Nares Strait, but this could happen much earlier than previously observed.
“Every year, the duration reduction is about a week,” Moore said.
“They used to persist for about 200 days and now they persist for about 150 days. There is a pretty noticeable reduction.
“We think it’s related to the fact that the ice is thinner and the thinner ice is less stable.”
In 2019, the Canadian government considered a section of the last ice floor to be the marine protected area of Tuvaijuittuq.
A section of the last ice area was considered a marine protected area of Tuvaijuittuq by the Canadian government in 2019. Tuvaijuittuq is inuktitut by “the place where ice never melts”
Tuvaijuittuq is inuktitut for “the place where ice never melts.”
Also last year it was revealed that it melts twice as fast as any ice cream in the area.
The American Geophysical Union, an accredited organization of earth sciences, shared a video showing that the oldest and thickest solid layer of frozen water in the ocean has suffered 95% of its mass in the last 35 years. – which according to experts is a “dramatic indicator” of climate change.
The area is now dominated by thinner, more mobile ice that is more susceptible to melting, which “has caused tensions across the spectrum of ice-dependent organisms, from ice algae to polar bears.” .
However, according to WWF-Canada, “even with effective action to limit greenhouse gas emissions, sea ice will be reduced and last shorter periods in winter.”