China News Service, Beijing, July 2 (Reporter Sun Zifa) In the summer of 2020, the massive loss of sea ice in the "last ice zone" in the Arctic has caused widespread concern and concern.
Springer Nature’s open-access professional academic journal "Communication-Earth and Environment" recently published a climate change research paper saying that abnormal summer monsoons and thinning of ice have caused sea ice in the Arctic’s "last ice zone" Last summer, a lot of it melted and disappeared.
The Wandall Sea in northern Greenland of the Arctic Ocean is usually covered with dense and thick year-round snow and ice. It is expected that under climate change, it will last longer than any area in the Arctic Ocean.
This area is often referred to as the "last ice zone" of the Arctic Ocean.
But in the summer of 2020, contrary to climate predictions, the Arctic Ocean's "last ice zone" has wide open water.
This area is an important refuge for polar bears, walruses and seals.
The latest research results indicate that in the face of climate change, the final ice region may be more vulnerable than previously thought.
In order to investigate what caused the unexpected disappearance of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean’s "last ice zone", the corresponding author of the paper, Axel Schweiger of the University of Washington in the United States, and colleagues used satellite images and mathematical models. The environmental conditions of the Wander Sea in 2020 are included.
They estimated through research that most of the loss of sea ice in the summer of 2020 was caused by abnormal weather, and the strong summer wind blew the sea ice away from the last ice area.
At the same time, the author of the paper also performed numerical simulations on this area based on data since 1979. The results show that long-term climate change has led to thinning of sea ice, which will intensify the melting of the ice in 2020, and make the final ice area in an abnormal climate. Conditions are more fragile.
The author of the paper suggests that further research should try to quantify the resilience of the last ice area to climate change for conservation purposes, because this area may eventually become the last summer habitat for mammals that depend on ice for survival.
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