Sea Ice Restoration
-How to Prioritize Action
In the 1980s some areas had full-year ice coverage, while other areas only had coverage during the winter months, and were uncovered for a period during the summer.
Depending on today’s status we can look to:
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Maintain this full-year coverage (“Preserve”) or
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Restoring it (“Restore”) if we lost it over the past 30+ years, or
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Extending it back to the original coverage period (“Extend”)
Both Restore and Extent objectives may prove more or less difficult, depending on how much ice extent “duration” has been lost from the 1980s:
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This is effectively a proxy for climate conditions: how much slower ice is building in the winter season, and how much quicker ice is melting in the summer season
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Based on this, we define two levels of complexity (L1 and L2) which would require more or less ice thickening to restore original conditions
Finally, we have some areas where sea ice is only present for such a short period of time, during the year, that it would probably be very ineffective to attempt ice restoration. We identify them as “Not economical” / “No Action”.
These categories are an initial attempt to support prioritisation.
Figure: Types of Ice Restoration based on 2020-22 restoring to 1980-89 levels
The areas that could be targeted for full-year sea-ice preservation or restoration amount to nearly 7 million km2
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2.7 million km2 to preserve
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2.7 million km2 “easy” to restore (Level 1)
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1.6 million km2 “harder” to restore (Level 2)
To these we could add another 5 million km2 for areas where the sea-ice duration could be extended during the summer months.
The areas that could be targeted for full-year sea-ice preservation or restoration amount to nearly 7 million km2
-
2.7 million km2 to preserve
-
2.7 million km2 “easy” to restore (Level 1)
-
1.6 million km2 “harder” to restore (Level 2)
To these we could add another 5 million km2 for areas where the sea-ice duration could be extended during the summer months.