Research shows polar ice habitats shrinking due to warming

PARIS – Climate change is increasingly reshaping the polar oceans, with Arctic waters warming rapidly, sea ice shrinking and wildlife losing habitat at both ends of the planet, an annual report said on Sept 30.

The Copernicus Ocean State Report depicts profound changes across the world’s seas, from record-breaking heatwaves in the Mediterranean and Black seas to shifts in marine ecosystems and increasingly acidic waters.

“The message is very clear. The ocean is changing rapidly,” said Pierre Bahurel, director general of Mercator Ocean International, which runs the European Union’s Copernicus Marine Service.

Some of the more dramatic effects from global warming are taking place in the poles, which occupy around 20 per cent of the global ocean surface.

The Arctic’s combined sea surface and sea-ice surface temperature rose 4.2 deg C between 1982 and 2024, or around 1 deg C per decade, according to the 10th annual oceans report.

By comparison, global sea surface temperatures have been increasing by 0.12 deg C per decade.

In the Kara Sea north of Siberia, temperatures have climbed by 6.7 deg C since 1982, or 1.68 deg C per decade.

As temperatures rise, Arctic sea ice has shrunk by nearly half a million square kilometres per decade since 1979, equivalent to losing an area the size of Spain every 10 years.

The retreating ice exposes Arctic coastlines to waves, worsening coastal erosion and raising risks for coastal communities and infrastructure, the report warned.

“The Arctic sea ice has been declining since the early 80s, leaving around 60% of coastal infrastructure vulnerable to erosion and sea level rise,” Karina von Schuckmann, director of the oceans report, said in a media briefing.

Ice loss in Antarctica, meanwhile, is threatening penguin populations on the frozen continent.

Record-low Antarctic sea ice in 2022 coincided with the first-ever recorded large-scale breeding failure of emperor penguins, the report said.

Emperor penguins rely on stable sea ice to live, hunt and breed and their chicks can perish if they fall in freezing water before developing waterproof feathers.

In April, emperor penguins were upgraded from “near threatened” to “endangered” by the IUCN, the global authority on threatened wildlife.

More than 90% of emperor penguin colonies could be near-extinct by 2100 if sea ice loss persists at its current rate. AFP