There is one region of the Arctic that is resisting the blows of climate change.
It was believed for some time that part of the Arctic region was largely protected from rising global temperatures, but more recent studies show that it is also under threat.
This is the region known as the Last Arctic Area of ​​Ice (LIA) — a 1 million km² strip between Greenland and Canada.
Its name derives from the thickest and oldest ice sheet in the Arctic, which, according to climate prediction models, makes it the area that will remain frozen the longest as the planet warms.
Even in the northern hemisphere summer, when some of the Arctic ice melts, the LIA remains frozen.
“But that will change in the future,” Robert Newton, a researcher at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told BBC Mundo, a Spanish-language news service.
“We will see in the next few years that during the summer the LIA ice sheet will be smaller and smaller.”
Newton is co-author of a recent study on the future of LIA.
“If the ice that remains frozen all year round disappears, an entire ecosystem will be destroyed and something new will emerge,” he said.
Reducing the LIA will have devastating consequences for the species of flora and fauna that inhabit the region — and will also impact humans.
But what is LIA and why does much of the planet’s future depend on it?
Eternal ice?
Winds and ocean currents from Siberia to Canada cause layers of ice to accumulate on the LIA, creating a thicker, longer-lasting block.
An archipelago belonging to Canada captures this ice, preventing it from seeping southward and melting into the Atlantic Ocean, according to Science News.
Historically, the ice sheet thickness in the Arctic has been 2.5 m to 3 m—while in the LIA, the average thickness has been 6 m to 10 m.
But as the planet warms, temperatures in the Arctic rise about 2.5 times faster than the rest of Earth, according to Newton.
This is partly due to the fact that warming creates a vicious circle. The white surface of the ice reflects sunlight into space, keeping the surface cool. But if that ice melts, warming accelerates and, in turn, melts more ice.
Currently, the average thickness in the Arctic has dropped to less than 1.5 m, and in the LIA it is around 4 m.
In summer, the ice sheet is getting smaller and smaller.
It currently occupies an area that is less than half of what it occupied in the early 1980s, according to Newton’s research.
“The question is how long will it take to go from an Arctic with ice to an Arctic without ice”, sums up the expert.
Possible scenarios
For Newton, there are two possible scenarios for the LIA.
One of them is more optimistic. In it, humanity stops emitting large amounts of CO2 or manages to apply, on a large scale, the technology that makes it possible to extract the CO2 that is already in the atmosphere.
“If we can stabilize the temperature at about 2°C above the pre-industrial era, the LIA could have ice all year round,” he says.
But there is also a less optimistic scenario.
“If we keep up the pace of carbon production of the last 50 years, calculations indicate that by the middle of the 21st century, there will be no sea ice cover in the Arctic during the summer, including the LIA,” says Newton.
A recent report by the United Nations (UN) estimates that, based on current commitments to reduce CO2 emissions, the planet’s temperature will increase by 2.7°C by the year 2100.
In this scenario, the Arctic summer ice is doomed to disappear.
refuge of life
Although the Arctic looks like a desolate territory, we know that it is home to a large amount of flora and fauna that depend on ice to survive.
It is home to well-known animals such as beluga whales, seals and polar bears.
But there is also a microscopic lifeworld essential for the balance of the ecosystem. The underwater layer of ice is teeming with plankton, crustaceans and small fish. They all have their place in the food chain and depend on ice to live and reproduce.
Newton explains that if the polar ecosystem disappears, other animals that do not depend on ice will colonize the Arctic.
“It will be a new ecology, but it will take a long time for Arctic life to recover,” he says.
Impact for humans
But the consequences won’t just affect wild animals.
For communities living in the Arctic, ice is critical to conserving their food sources, as well as being part of their culture.
“The world is an interconnected place,” says Newton.
“Everything that happens in the Arctic has a big impact on the rest of the planet.”
In many parts of the world, more extreme weather events are occurring than 20 or 30 years ago, according to Newton. Heavier rains, storms and prolonged droughts “are, in part, related to ice loss in the Arctic”.
The future
Currently, one-third of the LIA is under protection. In 2019, Canada established an area of ​​320,000 km² where transport, mining and all other types of development were prohibited for five years.
But the rest of the area is available for mineral exploration.
The Columbia University report warns that the Arctic Ocean and its coastline are home to billions of dollars in oil reserves and deposits of minerals such as nickel and copper.
University experts warn that as the amount of water increases in summer, so will the pressure to excavate, drill and open up transport corridors, which would contaminate the LIA with possible oil spills and the use of industrial substances.
And, as if these threats weren’t enough, Newton argues that the loss of the LIA would also have an “emotional cost.”
“Losing the world as we know it has a strong psychological impact,” he says.
“The Arctic may not be in the landscape outside your window, but it is part of the world we live in.”
