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Climate change

Rethinking the sea-ice tipping point

Nature volume 471, pages 47–48 (2011)Cite this article

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Summer sea-ice extent in the Arctic has decreased greatly during recent decades. Simulations of twenty-first-century climate suggest that the ice can recover from artificially imposed ice-free summer conditions within a couple of years.

Will the Arctic's floating cover of sea ice pass a critical threshold, or tipping point, beyond which a rapid, irreversible slide occurs to a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean? The question is a pertinent one bearing on the adaptability of Arctic marine life1, how ice loss influences atmospheric circulation and precipitation patterns within and beyond the Arctic2, and prospects for resource extraction and marine shipping3. According to a new study by Tietsche and colleagues4, and other recent work5, concerns over a tipping point may be unfounded.

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Figure 1: September sea-ice extent in the Arctic for 1979–2010.

SOURCE: NATIONAL SNOW & ICE DATA CENTER

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mark C. Serreze is at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0449, USA.,

    Mark C. Serreze

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  1. Mark C. Serreze
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Correspondence to Mark C. Serreze.

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Serreze, M. Rethinking the sea-ice tipping point. Nature 471, 47–48 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/471047a

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