Alarming milestone: the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free in just 3 years

New research sounds the alarm: At the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions, the Arctic Ocean will have its first ice-free day in 2027.

Arctic sea ice is melting at an unprecedented rate of more than 12% per decade, meaning we are racing towards the day when almost all of it is gone.

A study published in November in the journal Nature Communications said the worrying milestone for the planet will happen within nine to 20 years from 2023, regardless of how humans change their greenhouse gas emissions. At the current rate of emissions, it will happen in just three years.

A polar bear stands on an ice floe. Bears need the ice to travel and find food (Photo: Sepp Friedhuber/ Getty Images).

Sea ice on Earth is charted annually using satellite data, which has measured fluctuations in ice at both poles since 1979.

The world's sea ice plays a vital role in regulating ocean and air temperatures, maintaining marine habitats, and powering ocean currents that transport heat and nutrients around the globe.

The surface of sea ice also reflects some of the Sun's energy back into space in a process called the albedo effect. This effect can also work in reverse – as sea ice melts, it reveals darker water that absorbs more of the Sun's rays.

This means that as our planet warms, the Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the world.

The rapid warming has had dramatic and visible consequences. The extent of the planet's northernmost sea ice, which averaged 6.85 million square kilometers ^between 1979 and 1992, has shrunk to 4.28 million square kilometers ^this year.

That continued decline means future climate changes are increasingly likely to push the ice beyond the 1 million square kilometer limit, below which the area is considered 'ice-free.'

Based on the research results, scientists warn that this day could come in three to six years and is certainly inevitable by the 2030s.

_{However, the more CO2} emissions we can reduce , the less severe the shock from Arctic ice loss will be, and any emissions cut will have the benefit of delaying the time our planet loses ice.