Global warning may have already passed an irreversible tipping point, the scientist who led the biggest-ever expedition to the Arctic has warned.
Presenting the first findings of the world’s largest mission to the North Pole, an expedition involving 300 scientists from 20 countries, Markus Rex said on Tuesday that the researchers had found that Arctic ice is retreating faster than ever before.
“The disappearance of summer sea ice in the Arctic is one of the first landmines in this minefield, one of the tipping points that we set off first when we push warming too far,” he said during the presentation in Germany’s capital, Berlin.
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“And one can essentially ask if we haven’t already stepped on this mine and already set off the beginning of the explosion.”
The $165m expedition returned to Germany in October after 389 days drifting through the Arctic, bringing home devastating proof of a dying Arctic Ocean and warnings of ice-free summers in just decades. It also brought back 150 terabytes of data and more than 1,000 ice samples.
The data collected during the expedition included readings on the atmosphere, ocean, sea ice and ecosystems.
Rex said scientists found that the Arctic Ocean ice had retreated “faster in the spring of 2020 than since the beginning of records” and that “the spread of the sea ice in the summer was only half as large as decades ago.”
Source: Aljazeera
