Ice-free Arctic at 1.5 °C? | Nature Climate Change
Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Correspondence
  • Published:

Ice-free Arctic at 1.5 °C?

Nature Climate Change volume 7, pages 230–231 (2017)Cite this article

Subjects

To the Editor

The Paris Agreement1 to combat climate change includes an aspirational goal to limit global warming to 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial level, substantially more ambitious than the previous target of 2 °C. One of the most visible and iconic aspects of recent climate change is the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice2, which is having profound implications for the environment, ecosystems, and human inhabitants of this region and beyond3.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Predicting the likelihood of an ice-free Arctic for the 1.5 °C and 2 °C targets.

References

  1. Adoption of the Paris Agreement FCCC/CP/2015/L.9/Rev.1 (UNFCCC, 2015); http://go.nature.com/2mmbWvt

  2. IPCC Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).

  3. Cohen, J. et al. Nat. Geosci. 7, 627–637 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Wang, M. & Overland, J. E. Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L07502 (2009).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Boe, J., Hall, A. & Qu, X. Nat. Geosci. 2, 341–343 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Liu, J., Song, M., Horton, R. M. & Hu, Y. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 110, 12571–12576 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Massonnet, F. et al. Cryosphere 6, 1383–1394 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Mahlstein, I. & Knutti, R. J. Geophys. Res. 117, D06104 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Notz, D. & Stroeve, J. Science 354, 747–750 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Rogelj, J. et al. Nature 534, 631–639 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the climate modelling groups for producing and making available their model output and to the following data providers: National Snow and Ice Data Center (observed sea-ice extent) and Earth System Grid (CMIP5 multi-model ensemble).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4QE, UK

    James A. Screen & Daniel Williamson

Authors
  1. James A. Screen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Daniel Williamson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to James A. Screen.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Screen, J., Williamson, D. Ice-free Arctic at 1.5 °C?. Nature Clim Change 7, 230–231 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3248

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3248

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing