Scientists say the Arctic Ocean began to warm decades earlier than expected

international team of researchers Rebuild Evolution heating subordinate Arctic Ocean He found that the waters of this fragile ecosystem have been warming since then early last century, several decades earlier than the records suggested.

The study, published Wednesday in science progress, concludes that the Arctic is warming due to the ingress of warm waters from the Atlantic Ocean, a phenomenon known as Atlanteification.

The authors found that Arctic Ocean Warming began rapidly at the beginning of the last century as warmer and saltier waters flowed from the Atlantic Ocean, and this change may have begun before the documented warming of recent decades.

To conduct the study, the researchers studied an area called fram strait, between Greenland and Svalbard, which is the gateway to the Arctic Ocean, and using geochemical and environmental data from oceanic sediments, they reconstructed differences in water properties over the past 800 years, such as changes in temperature or salinity.

In the first eight hundred years, records were consistent, but suddenly, at the beginning of the 20th century, “such a sudden, attention-grabbing change occurred,” he explains. Thomas’ thesis, co-author of the National Research Council Polar Science Institute in Bologna, Italy.

Since 1900, ocean temperatures have risen by about two degrees Celsius, while sea ice has receded and salinity has risen.

The study provides the first historical perspective of the Arctic Atlantic and reveals a connection with the North Atlantic much stronger than previously thought.

The authors warn that this association could affect Arctic climate variability and have major implications for the decline of sea ice and the rise in sea levels on a global scale as the polar ice caps continue to melt.

The temperature of all the world’s oceans is rising due to climate change, but the Arctic Ocean, the world’s smallest and shallowest ocean, is the ocean warming the fastest: “more than twice the global average,” notes Francesco Mochitiello, co-author of the study and a member of the Cambridge Department of Geography.

As the Arctic Ocean warms, polar ice melts, global sea levels rise, and permafrost, which stores massive amounts of methane, a much more harmful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, is thawing.

The study authors warn that in the future “we can expect greater Arctic Ocean expansion in the future due to climate change” and argue that their results also reveal “a potential flaw in climate models, given that they do not reproduce in the early Atlantic to early last century.”

“Climate simulations in general do not reproduce this type of warming in the Arctic Ocean, which means that there is an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms driving the decomposition process,” Tommaso concludes.

With information from EFE