Climate change to melt summertime Arctic sea ice by 2050

Summertime Arctic sea ice is set to vanish by 2050 due to climate change. The International Cryosphere Climate Initiative research network says that in general it rains in East Antarctica in March, as air temperatures are normally warm. However, during this summer, the Alps lost 5 percent of their ice cover. And in September, Greenland set a new record for melting at that time of year, as per a media report.
Following the planet’s eight warmest years on record, there is growing evidence that the world’s icy regions are melting at increasing rates, and far faster than scientists had expected. For the ice that forms and floats atop the Arctic Ocean each summer, co-author Robbie Mallett, a sea ice researcher at University College London.
says, “Just as there’s no longer a credible path to keeping warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, there’s no credible path to avoiding an ice-free summer.” 
Mallett said COP27 talks would do little to save the summer sea ice. “We’re starting to see something that can’t be saved,” he said.
Last year, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said summer sea ice would be lost even if warming peaked at 1.6 degrees above the preindustrial average. The world is currently on track for 2.8 degrees of warming by 2100. 
If summer sea ice is lost, no multiyear sea ice (sea ice that persists in the ocean from year to year) will remain. “A distinct environment on Earth is going to go extinct,” said Mallett. This will have a profound impact on a region that is home to more than 4.5 million, and which faces increasing erosion as climate change fuels stronger winds and waves, he said.
Scientists say the world in this decade must cut carbon-dioxide emissions in half from 2005 levels, and reach net zero by 2050, to prevent runaway climate change with extreme impacts. But, according to the report,  even if this were achieved, the world’s ice-covered regions would begin to stabilize only at some point between 2040 and 2080. Glacier melt would continue for more than a century before slowing by 2200.
Meanwhile, the U.N. climate summit is set to run through Nov.18 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Arctic campaigners and indigenous youth from the region planned a media event to mark the demise of sea ice.

Aruna Gaitonde, Editor in Chief of the Asian Bureau, Rough&Polished