UPDATE Sept. 8, 2026: This story has been updated to correct the total increase in melt season since the 1980s.

Relatively few people have been to the Arctic, and even fewer have set foot in Antarctica. Most of us rely on our imaginations and media to visualize these landscapes and the ways they are changing.

Research shows that the Arctic is than the global average. The sea ice is melting, exposing more open ocean and throwing the ecosystem out of balance. The story of Antarctica contains fewer details, but emerging trends are concerning to researchers.

Conceptualizing this change can be challenging for those of us who have only glimpsed Greenland from the airplane window, but for someone with firsthand experience, it鈥檚 eye-opening.

, a research scientist at the 天美影视传媒鈥檚 Applied Physics Laboratory, has visited the Arctic at least once a year since 2009, sometimes staying for as long as five months.

Webster is the lead author of a new research paper, in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, that describes how sea ice has changed in the past 50 years.

Their analysis arrives as the world begins preparations for the , a dedicated period of observation that will peak during the 2023 to 2033 season. International Polar years have occurred every 30 to 50 years since the late 1800s to advance polar research and track environmental change. The upcoming International Polar Year will occur just 25 years after the last, held in 2007, due to the acceleration of climate change.

What motivated this study?

Melinda Webster: We have known for a long time now that the extent, or area, and thickness of sea ice is declining, especially in the Arctic. But we wanted to take that a step further to examine the properties of the ice, especially perennial ice, which doesn鈥檛 completely melt away in summer. We updated trends for sea ice with 15 to 20 more years worth of data to understand how it has changed through the contemporary period. We also wanted to emphasize the divergent responses we see in the Arctic and Antarctica, and make recommendations for future research.

What did you discover?

MW: The Arctic sea ice melt season has gotten approximately seven and a half days longer per decade since 1979, and this is mostly driven by sea ice forming later in the fall. This has sweeping implications for the global climate system. The superpower of sea ice is its high albedo, meaning that it reflects a lot of sunlight 鈥� somewhere between 60% and 90% 鈥� back into space. Dark ocean water, on the other hand, reflects just 7%. The open ocean absorbs much more sunlight than ice does, and with that absorption comes warming. In the fall, the ocean is too warm for ice to form and it is taking longer for that heat to dissipate.

The seasonal ice that ultimately forms is thinner, and easier to melt in the following spring and summer. So this creates a cycle of warming that reduces ice coverage and increases the amount of energy in our climate system over time.

What鈥檚 the deal with Antarctica?

MW: Antarctica is a land mass covered in ice and surrounded by water. The Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land. Although they share certain qualities, the two regions are very different from one another, with distinct responses to climate change. For a long time, the sea ice cover wasn鈥檛 declining in Antarctica, but in the last four years the sea ice cover experienced record losses.

Logistically, it’s a lot more difficult to deploy instruments in the Antarctic than the Arctic. The measurements we do have are less accurate because the Antarctica sea ice system is more complicated. But, we need to unravel these recent changes, which is a priority research area we identify in the paper.

What other impacts do you foresee these changes having?

MW: Another key result we presented is that snow cover on Arctic sea ice has gotten thinner and the sea ice itself is smoother. That has huge repercussions for polar bears and seals, as it impacts their ability to build dens for raising their young.

There’s also a connection to fisheries. Changes in sea ice cover also impact algae, which form the base of the food web. These algae are accustomed to very low light conditions, but thinner snow and ice let more light in and the algae are essentially getting sunburnt.

When you take an ecosystem that was adapted to an ice environment and introduce open ocean, it disrupts its regular functioning. The health of algae impacts the entire food web, which has important implications for fisheries in the sub-Arctic and Arctic. Less food might mean fewer fish, and that introduces a whole new set of concerns.

Are there any potential solutions?聽

MW: To mitigate climate change, you have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That’s at the center of the problem. There are various alternative geoengineering strategies floating around but little consensus on how safe and useful they are.

I think that it is critical to have international regulations that are shaped by representative communities on what kind of research we need before any geoengineering action is taken, if at all. Still, at the end of the day, geoengineering is a Band-Aid. We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to deal with the underlying cause of climate change instead of just treating its symptoms.

I鈥檓 optimistic about solutions for reducing emissions. Technological and scientific innovation are progressing at a rapid pace, which gives me hope about the future.

Co-authors include of the University of Hamburg; of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at California Institute of Technology; of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; of Universit茅 Catholique de Louvain; of the Finnish Meteorological Institute and of Hokkaido University.

This research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Office of Naval Research, NASA, the Alfred-Wegener-Institut, Helmholtz-Zentrum f眉r Polar- und Meeresforschung, the University of Hamburg, the German Research Foundation, SnowCast, the DFG Emmy Noether Programme Project Snowflake and the Research Council of Finland.

For more information, contact Webster at melindaw@uw.edu.

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A warming climate is causing a decline in sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, where loss of sea ice has important ecological, economic and climate impacts. On top of this long-term shift due to climate change are weather events that affect the sea ice from week to week.

The strongest Arctic cyclone ever observed poleward of 70 degrees north latitude struck in January 2022 northeast of Greenland. A new analysis led by the 天美影视传媒 shows that while weather forecasts accurately predicted the storm, ice models seriously underestimated its impact on the region鈥檚 sea ice.

The , published in October in the Journal of Geophysical Research鈥揂tmospheres, suggests that existing models underestimate the impact of big waves on ice floes in the Arctic Ocean.

鈥淭he loss of sea ice in six days was the biggest change we could find in the historical observations since 1979, and the area of ice lost was 30% greater than the previous record,鈥� said lead author , a research assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the UW. 鈥淭he ice models did predict some loss, but only about half of what we saw in the real world.鈥�

Accurate sea ice forecasts are important safety tools for Northern communities, mariners and others operating in Arctic waters. The accuracy of forecasts in the Arctic Ocean also has broader effects.

鈥淭he skill of a weather forecast in the Arctic affects the skill of weather forecasts in other places,鈥� Blanchard-Wrigglesworth said.

The January 2022 cyclone had the lowest pressure center estimated since satellite records began in 1979 above 70 degrees north. It was an extreme version of a typical winter storm. Climate change doesn鈥檛 appear responsible for the cyclone: The researchers didn鈥檛 find a trend in the strength of intense Arctic cyclones since 1979, and sea ice area was close to the historical normal for that region before the storm hit.

Waves travel through sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, as seen from a ship in October 2015. Credit: Ed Blanchard-Wrigglesworth/天美影视传媒

During the storm, record winds howled over the Arctic Ocean. The waves grew to 8 meters (26 feet) tall in open water and remained surprisingly strong as they traveled through the sea ice. The ice heaved 2 meters (6 feet) up and down near the edge of the pack, and NASA鈥檚 ICESat-2 satellite shows that the waves reached as far as 100 kilometers (60 miles) toward the center of the ice pack.

Six days after the storm struck, the sea ice had thinned significantly in the affected waters north of Norway and Russia, in places losing more than half a meter (about 1.5 feet) of thickness.

鈥淚t was a monster storm, and the sea ice got pummeled. And the sea ice models didn鈥檛 predict that loss, which suggests there are ways we could improve the model physics,鈥� said second author , a research assistant professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She begins a research position at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory in the new year.

The new analysis shows that the atmospheric heat from the storm had a small effect, meaning some other mechanism was to blame for the ice loss. Possibilities, Blanchard-Wrigglesworth suggests, include sea ice that was thinner before the storm hit than models had estimated; that the storm鈥檚 waves broke up ice floes more forcefully than models predicted as they penetrated deep into the ice pack; or that waves churned up deeper, warmer water and brought it into contact with the sea ice, melting the ice from below.

The unexpected ice loss, despite an accurate storm forecast, suggests that this is an area where models could improve. The researchers hope to monitor future storms to pinpoint exactly what led to the dramatic sea ice loss, potentially by placing sensors in the path of a future approaching storm.

While this storm doesn鈥檛 appear to be linked to climate change, the increase of open water as sea ice melts is allowing for larger waves that are eroding Arctic coastlines. Those waves, researchers said, could also affect the remaining sea ice pack.

鈥淕oing into the future, this is something to keep in mind, that these extreme events might produce these episodes of huge sea ice loss,鈥� Blanchard-Wrigglesworth said.

Other co-authors are at NASA, at NASA and the University of Maryland and at the University of Auckland and Brown University. The research was funded by NASA, the U.S. Navy鈥檚 Office of Naval Research and Schmidt Futures.

For more information, contact Blanchard-Wrigglesworth at ed@atmos.uw.edu or Webster at mwebster3@alaska.edu.

Grants: NASA: 80NSSC20K0922, 80NSSC20K0959, ONR-DRI: N00014-21-1-2490

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天美影视传媒 polar scientists are on Alaska’s North Slope this week for the 2016 Barrow Sea Ice Camp. Supported by the National Science Foundation, the event brings together U.S.-based sea ice observers, satellite experts and modelers at various career stages to collect data and discuss issues related to measuring and modeling sea ice. The goal is to integrate the research community in order to better observe and understand the changes in Arctic sea ice.

Check out the group’s , written by a who’s taking his first trip into the field, or follow updates on . The group is based just north of Barrow from May 26 to June 2, in the northernmost point in the U.S.

UW participants include , a UW professor of atmospheric sciences, , an oceanographer at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory, , a physicist at the Applied Physics Laboratory, , a UW graduate who is now a research assistant at APL, UW atmospheric sciences postdoctoral researchers and , and , an anthropology student who has a visiting appointment at APL.

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From research stations drifting on ice floes to high-tech aircraft radar, scientists have been tracking the depth of snow that accumulates on Arctic sea ice for almost a century. Now that people are more concerned than ever about what is happening at the poles, research led by the 天美影视传媒 and NASA confirms that snow has thinned significantly in the Arctic, particularly on sea ice in western waters near Alaska.

A , now online in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, combines data collected by ice buoys and NASA aircraft with historic data from ice floes staffed by Soviet scientists from the late 1950s through the early 1990s to track changes over decades.

Historically, Soviets on drifting sea ice used meter sticks and handwritten logs to record snow depth. Today, researchers on the ground use an automated probe similar to a ski pole to verify the accuracy of airborne measurements.

“When you stab it into the ground, the basket move up, and it records the distance between the magnet and the end of the probe,” said first author , a UW graduate student in oceanography. “You can take a lot of measurements very quickly. It’s a pretty big difference from the Soviet field stations.”

Webster verified the accuracy of airborne data taken during a March 15, 2012 NASA flight over the sea ice near Barrow, Alaska. The following day Webster followed the same track in minus 30-degree temperatures while stabbing through the snow every two to three steps.

The authors compared data from NASA airborne surveys, collected between 2009 and 2013, with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers buoys frozen into the sea ice, and earlier data from Soviet drifting ice stations in 1937 and from 1954 through 1991. Results showed that snowpack has thinned from 14 inches to 9 inches (35 cm to 22 cm) in the western Arctic, and from 13 inches to 6 inches (33 cm to 14.5 cm) in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, west and north of Alaska.

That’s a decline in the western Arctic of about a third, and snowpack in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas less than half as thick in spring in recent years compared to the average Soviet-era records for that time of year.

“Knowing exactly the error between the airborne and the ground measurements, we’re able to say with confidence, Yes, the snow is decreasing in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas,” said co-author , an oceanographer at the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

The authors speculate the reason for the thinner snow, especially in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, may be that the surface freeze-up is happening later in the fall so the year’s heaviest snowfalls, in September and October, mostly fall into the open ocean.

What thinner snow will mean for the ice is not certain. Deeper snow actually shields ice from cold air, so a thinner blanket may allow the ice to grow thicker during the winter. On the other hand, thinner snow cover may allow the ice to melt earlier in the springtime.

Thinner snow has other effects, Webster said, for animals that use the snow to make dens, and for low-light microscopic plants that grow underneath the sea ice and form the base of the Arctic food web.

The new results support a 15-year-old UW-led study in which Russian and American scientists first analyzed the historic Arctic Ocean snow measurements. That detected a slight decline in spring snow depth that the authors believed, even then, was due to a shorter ice-covered season.

“This confirms and extends the results of that earlier work, showing that we continue to see thinning snow on the Arctic sea ice,” said Rigor, who was also a co-author on the earlier paper.

The recent fieldwork was part of NASA’s Operation program, which is using aircraft to track changes while NASA prepares to launch a new ice-monitoring satellite in 2017. The team conducted in spring 2012 as part of a larger program to monitor changes in the Arctic.

The research was supported by NASA and the U.S. Interagency Arctic Buoy Program. Co-authors are Son Nghiem at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Nathan Kurtz at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Sinead Farrell at the University of Maryland, Don Perovich at the federal Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory and Matthew Sturm at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

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For more information, contact Webster at melindaw@uw.edu and Rigor at 206-685-2571 or ignatius@apl.washington.edu.

More images are available at聽 www.flickr.com/uwnews.

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