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Why is sea ice melting in the Arctic? NASA researchers aim to find out.
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By Jacob Wycoff

October 1, 2024 / 6:08 PM EDT / CBS Boston

BOSTON – Why is sea ice continuing to melt in the Arctic? NASA researchers are aiming to find out as they just wrapped up a never-before-done experiment.

NASA's ARCSIX research
The research, called Arctic Radiation-Cloud-Aerosol-Surface Interaction Experiment (ARCSIX), measures how aerosols interact with sea ice. One of the mission leaders spoke to WBZ-TV about why this experiment is so important.

NASA has been flying in and out of clouds high over the skies of Greenland, gathering valuable data along the way.

"The Arctic's changing really fast, faster than anywhere else on the planet," climate research scientist Patrick Taylor said. "There's a lot of things we don't know about the Arctic. The evolution of the Arctic climate system has a lot of ripple effects that influence us where we live in the United States."

Why is sea ice melting?
That's what makes this mission so important, and why Taylor said the arctic is the perfect research bed.

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"The Arctic is really stable because it has the sea ice," Taylor said. "When you have a stable atmosphere, it's how you get these distinct layers."

Every flight there consisted of at least four distinct, unique aerosol layers. ARCSIX, quantifies those layers, and their impact on seasonal sea ice melt. The aerosols affect weather, and therefore climate, in a few ways.

Aerosols act as cloud condensation nuclei, causing more clouds to form. Some aerosols can reflect sunlight in space, possibly cooling the climate by blocking the sun's energy. On the other hand, aerosols like black carbon can absorb heat, having the opposite effect.

"We're looking at processes that can accelerate the warming of the Arctic. And warming of the arctic means faster melting," Taylor said.

Rising sea levels
And faster melting means faster-rising sea levels. It's estimated that 80% of Greenland is covered in ice. And even if we stopped emissions right now, the continued warming and melting ice would raise seas by about a foot over the next 50 years.

For now, Taylor and his colleagues are looking forward to digging into the data.

"We'll have some kind of first reflections of the data here in the next couple months and then kind of it'll unfold over the next few years and start to piece things together over time in ways that we haven't thought of yet."