Arctic sea ice could vanish in summers this century even if governments achieve a core target for limiting global warming set by almost 200 countries, scientists have said.
The ice has been shrinking steadily in recent decades, damaging the livelihoods of indigenous people and wildlife, such as polar bears, while opening the region to more shipping and oil and gas exploration.
Under the 2015 Paris agreement, governments set a goal of limiting the rise in average world temperatures to well below 2C (35.6F) above pre-industrial times, with an aspiration of just 1.5C.
“The 2C target may be insufficient to prevent an ice-free Arctic,” James Screen and Daniel Williamson of Exeter University wrote in the Nature Climate Change journal after a review of ice projections.