A year-round satellite sea-ice thickness record from CryoSat-2.

Arctic sea ice is diminishing with climate warming at a rate unmatched for at least 1,000 years. As the receding ice pack raises commercial interest in the Arctic, it has become more variable and mobile, which increases safety risks to maritime users. Satellite observations of sea-ice thickness are currently unavailable during the crucial melt period from May to September, when they would be most valuable for applications such as seasonal forecasting, owing to major challenges in the processing of altimetry data.

New climate models reveal faster and larger increases in Arctic precipitation than previously projected.

As the Arctic continues to warm faster than the rest of the planet, evidence mounts that the region is experiencing unprecedented environmental change. The hydrological cycle is projected to intensify throughout the twenty-first century, with increased evaporation from expanding open water areas and more precipitation. The latest projections from the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) point to more rapid Arctic warming and sea-ice loss by the year 2100 than in previous projections, and consequently, larger and faster changes in the hydrological cycle.

Shine a light: Under-ice light and its ecological implications in a changing Arctic Ocean.

The Arctic marine ecosystem is shaped by the seasonality of the solar cycle, spanning from 24-h light at the sea surface in summer to 24-h darkness in winter. The amount of light available for under-ice ecosystems is the result of different physical and biological processes that affect its path through atmosphere, snow, sea ice and water. In this article, we review the present state of knowledge of the abiotic (clouds, sea ice, snow, suspended matter) and biotic (sea ice algae and phytoplankton) controls on the underwater light field.

The call of the emperor penguin: Legal responses to species threatened by climate change.

Species extinction risk is accelerating due to anthropogenic climate change, making it urgent to protect vulnerable species through legal frameworks in order to facilitate conservation actions that help mitigate risk. Here, we discuss fundamental concepts for assessing climate change risks to species using the example of the emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri), currently being considered for protection under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA). This species forms colonies on Antarctic sea ice, which is projected to significantly decline due to ongoing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Divergence of Arctic shrub growth associated with sea ice decline.

Arctic sea ice extent (SIE) is declining at an accelerating rate with a wide range of ecological consequences. However, determining sea ice effects on tundra vegetation remains a challenge. In this study, we examined the universality or lack thereof in tundra shrub growth responses to changes in SIE and summer climate across the Pan-Arctic, taking advantage of 23 tundra shrub-ring chronologies from 19 widely distributed sites (56°N to 83°N).

A Lagrangian Snow-Evolution System for Sea-Ice Applications (SnowModel-LG): Part I-Model Description.

A Lagrangian snow-evolution model (SnowModel-LG) was used to produce daily, pan-Arctic, snow-on-sea-ice, snow property distributions on a 25 × 25-km grid, from 1 August 1980 through 31 July 2018 (38 years). The model was forced with NASA's Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications-Version 2 (MERRA-2) and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ReAnalysis-5th Generation (ERA5) atmospheric reanalyses, and National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) sea ice parcel concentration and trajectory data sets (approximately 61,000, 14 × 14-km parcels). The simulations performed full surface and internal energy and mass balances within a multilayer snowpack evolution system.

The polar regions in a 2°C warmer world.

Over the past decade, the Arctic has warmed by 0.75°C, far outpacing the global average, while Antarctic temperatures have remained comparatively stable. As Earth approaches 2°C warming, the Arctic and Antarctic may reach 4°C and 2°C mean annual warming, and 7°C and 3°C winter warming, respectively.

The Trajectory Towards a Seasonally Ice-Free Arctic Ocean.

Purpose Of Review: The observed substantial loss of Arctic sea ice has raised prospects of a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean within the foreseeable future. In this review, we summarize our current understanding of the most likely trajectory of the Arctic sea-ice cover towards this state.

Recent Findings: The future trajectory of the Arctic sea-ice cover can be described through a deterministic component arising primarily from future greenhouse gas emissions, and a chaotic component arising from internal variability.

Sea ice, rain-on-snow and tundra reindeer nomadism in Arctic Russia.

Sea ice loss is accelerating in the Barents and Kara Seas (BKS). Assessing potential linkages between sea ice retreat/thinning and the region's ancient and unique social-ecological systems is a pressing task. Tundra nomadism remains a vitally important livelihood for indigenous Nenets and their large reindeer herds.

Observed Arctic sea-ice loss directly follows anthropogenic CO2 emission.

Arctic sea ice is retreating rapidly, raising prospects of a future ice-free Arctic Ocean during summer. Because climate-model simulations of the sea-ice loss differ substantially, we used a robust linear relationship between monthly-mean September sea-ice area and cumulative carbon dioxide (CO) emissions to infer the future evolution of Arctic summer sea ice directly from the observational record. The observed linear relationship implies a sustained loss of 3 ± 0.

Arctic sea ice trends, variability and implications for seasonal ice forecasting.

September Arctic sea ice extent over the period of satellite observations has a strong downward trend, accompanied by pronounced interannual variability with a detrended 1 year lag autocorrelation of essentially zero. We argue that through a combination of thinning and associated processes related to a warming climate (a stronger albedo feedback, a longer melt season, the lack of especially cold winters) the downward trend itself is steepening. The lack of autocorrelation manifests both the inherent large variability in summer atmospheric circulation patterns and that oceanic heat loss in winter acts as a negative (stabilizing) feedback, albeit insufficient to counter the steepening trend.

Effects of climate change on an emperor penguin population: analysis of coupled demographic and climate models.

Sea ice conditions in the Antarctic affect the life cycle of the emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri). We present a population projection for the emperor penguin population of Terre Adélie, Antarctica, by linking demographic models (stage-structured, seasonal, nonlinear, two-sex matrix population models) to sea ice forecasts from an ensemble of IPCC climate models. Based on maximum likelihood capture-mark-recapture analysis, we find that seasonal sea ice concentration anomalies (SICa ) affect adult survival and breeding success.

Demographic models and IPCC climate projections predict the decline of an emperor penguin population.

Studies have reported important effects of recent climate change on Antarctic species, but there has been to our knowledge no attempt to explicitly link those results to forecasted population responses to climate change. Antarctic sea ice extent (SIE) is projected to shrink as concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs) increase, and emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) are extremely sensitive to these changes because they use sea ice as a breeding, foraging and molting habitat. We project emperor penguin population responses to future sea ice changes, using a stochastic population model that combines a unique long-term demographic dataset (1962-2005) from a colony in Terre Adélie, Antarctica and projections of SIE from General Circulation Models (GCM) of Earth's climate included in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report.

Perspectives on the Arctic's shrinking sea-ice cover.

Linear trends in arctic sea-ice extent over the period 1979 to 2006 are negative in every month. This ice loss is best viewed as a combination of strong natural variability in the coupled ice-ocean-atmosphere system and a growing radiative forcing associated with rising concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases, the latter supported by evidence of qualitative consistency between observed trends and those simulated by climate models over the same period. Although the large scatter between individual model simulations leads to much uncertainty as to when a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean might be realized, this transition to a new arctic state may be rapid once the ice thins to a more vulnerable state.