![]() To put that in further perspective, Notz said, it means that driving about 2,500 miles in the average American car results in another three square meters of melted ice. “I imagine I occupy about a meter squared, and the thought of being responsible for the destruction of maybe 50 square meters a year is, well, depressing - and profound.” Since the average American produces roughly 16.39 metric tons per year ( as of 2013), it means each individual is responsible for about 50 square meters of lost sea ice. The scientists calculated that about three square meters of Arctic sea ice was lost for every metric ton of carbon dioxide released. “It’s one of those things that, in retrospect, sounds so obvious,” Notz said. So why hadn’t anyone used these two rates to find the link between carbon dioxide and sea ice loss? Dirk Notz, climate scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorologyīut Notz and study coauthor Julienne Stroeve of the the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., noticed something odd: Several decades of climate data has allowed scientists to quantify the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and temperature, and the relationship between temperature and the loss of sea ice. to figure out how my own actions make a difference. ![]() With less sea ice protecting the Earth’s surface, the ocean will absorb more energy, and grow even warmer.Ĭlimate change has always had this fairly abstract notion. That’s because sea ice reflects sunlight, whereas the ocean absorbs it. This also accelerates rising global temperatures, said Cecilia Bitz, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, who was not involved in the study. Eventually, if global warming continues, summer sea ice will melt entirely. ![]() Sea ice, which is water that freezes out of the ocean, goes through an annual cycle: It grows in the winter and starts to melt as the weather warms. And of course, ice sheets in both the Arctic and Antarctic are melting, causing ocean levels to rise. Weather events and droughts are becoming more extreme diseases are spreading more easily many species are going extinct as their habitats disappear. Scientists have already documented the myriad impacts that climate change, spurred on by greenhouse gas, has wrought on the environment. (It also acidifies the world’s oceans, making it difficult for sea creatures to build their shells and corals to build reefs.) And human activity, thanks in large part to the fossil fuels we burn, is speeding up the release of carbon dioxide. But now suddenly, with this three-square-meter loss per ton of CO2, it gives a very, very concrete and intuitive understanding of how we all cause Arctic sea ice to melt.”Ĭarbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas it traps heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, forcing the global temperature higher and higher. “So far, when we talked about global warming, it was always these very big numbers, like billions of tons of carbon dioxide - or very small numbers, like 0.1 degree of temperature change or something. “For us, this is really the first time that we do have an intuitive understanding of how our individual actions really contribute to global warming,” said lead author Dirk Notz, a climate scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany. The findings, published in the journal Science, highlight the direct effect that individuals have on climate change - and what it means for the Arctic’s shrinking sea ice. ![]() If you do the math, this means the average American is melting roughly 50 square meters of those frozen reserves every year. But now, scientists have found a way to bring the numbers down to Earth: For every metric ton of carbon dioxide released into the air, three square meters of Arctic sea ice disappear. Climate change may sometimes seem so big and abstract that it can be difficult to grasp the scope of the problem.
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