The IcyAlert warning system will use artificial intelligence to predict when the Arctic will experience ice-free summers.
A new warning system developed by Danish and Belgian researchers will predict when the Arctic Ocean will experience ice-free summers.
DMI writes this in a press release.
The system is called IcyAlert and, via an advanced forecast model built on artificial intelligence, is intended to predict when the Arctic will experience ice-free summers.
The Arctic experiences an ice-free summer when the amount of ice in the Arctic Sea falls below a certain threshold. In scientific circles, the Arctic is considered to have an ice-free summer when the amount of sea ice falls below 1,000,000 square kilometers of ice.
And it will have implications for the entire globe if the Arctic Ocean becomes ice-free in the summer in the future, says research leader from DMI Tian Tian.
“Sea ice is not just a local phenomenon. Its disappearance can amplify global climate feedback, altering atmospheric circulation and extreme weather patterns far beyond the region. IcyAlert is designed to provide knowledge and early warnings that society can act on.”
Heating is accelerated
The lack of summer ice also means that the warming of the Arctic is accelerating up to four times faster than the normal average. This happens because the lack of ice reduces the surface’s reflectivity but increases the absorption of sunlight, as white ice reflects while dark sea absorbs sunlight.
IcyAlert’s predictions about the melting ice in the Arctic must be both accurate in the short term, the next few seasons, and in the long term, after 2030. The Novo Nordisk Foundation is contributing 39.5 million kroner to the development of the system.
IcyAlert was developed by researchers from the Danish Metrological Institute (DMI), the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and the Royal Metrological Institute of Belgium (RMI).
The system will be developed and trained on the AI supercomputer Gefion, which King Frederik inaugurated back in October 2024.
The IcyAlert project will run until 2031, but the first early warnings and analyses are expected to be ready in 2028.
ritzau
