Happy New Year 2024 (and sorry for the forum being offline some hours) /DM
Notz, Dirk: Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, GermanyWhen is all the sea ice gone?The long-term evolution of Arctic summer sea ice is receiving increasing public attention, given the prospects of a complete sea-ice loss during summer before mid century. In this presentation, I will discuss the relationship between observations and models as relevant for estimating the evolution of sea ice on time scales of a few decades. In particular, I will outline why it is so difficult to identify models that most reliably simulate the future of Arctic sea ice, making a reliable estimate of the timing of a near-ice free Arctic from large-scale model simulations very hard. Based on this discussion, I will then introduce an observation-based estimate of the future evolution of Arctic sea ice that considers our physical understanding of the main processes that cause the ongoing ice loss.