Since 1979, when satellites made it possible to measure its extent faithfully, the Arctic Ocean has been losing almost 80,000 km (30,888 m) of ice every year. The amount is equivalent to the land mass of the U.S. state of Maine and this has been happening for nearly half a century.
Now, scientists who have been studying the region for over a decade have modeled and estimated when the first ice-free day in the Arctic will occur. Supported by the most advanced climate models, the researchers simulated the evolution of the Arctic ice floe starting from the situation of 2023, when its extension marked one of its historical minimums.
This threshold has been used for more than a decade in scientific studies, because, although the sea ice area of one million km is not small in absolute terms, it is north of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic archipelago, representing a critical point for understanding climate change impacts in the region.
In reality, the Arctic is not going to become completely ice-free, but scientists use the term ice-free to refer to the (historic) moment when the Arctic's ice extent drops below 1 million km.
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