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Thursday, October 2, 2025

Record low Arctic sea ice volume minimum highlights methane danger

The Arctic sea ice area reached its annual minimum on September 9, 2025, as described in an earlier post. The image below shows Arctic sea ice volume through October 2, 2025, when Arctic sea ice volume was at a record daily low, as it has been for more than a year. 


The image below shows monthly Arctic sea ice volume in the past 25 years. Markers show April (blue) and September (red) volume, corresponding with the year's maximum and minimum. In 2025, Arctic sea ice reached a record low maximum volume as well as a record low minimum volume. 


Warmer water flowing into the Arctic Ocean causes Arctic sea ice to lose thickness and thus volume, diminishing its capacity to act as a buffer that consumes ocean heat entering the Arctic Ocean from the North Atlantic. This means that - as sea ice thickness decreases - a lot of incoming ocean heat can no longer be consumed by melting the sea ice from below, and the heat will therefore contribute to higher temperatures of the water of the Arctic Ocean. The danger of this is described in the screenshot below. 

[ screenshot from earlier post ]

Lower air temperatures are now causing rapid growth of Arctic sea area, which is sealing off the Arctic Ocean and this makes it more difficult for ocean heat to be transferred to the atmosphere, thus aggravating the danger that more ocean heat will reach sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean and will destabilize methane hydrates contained in sediments. 

The methane danger is also illustrated by the image below, adapted from an image issued by NOAA October 2, 2025, showing hourly methane averages recorded at the Barrow Atmospheric Baseline Observatory (BRW), a NOAA facility located near Utqiaġvik (formerly Barrow), Alaska, at 71.32 degrees North.


Danger Diagram and Assessment

[ from earlier post ]

The very continuation of life on Earth is at stake and the sheer potential that all life on Earth may be condemned to disappear due to a refusal by some people to do the right thing, that should prompt the whole world into rapid and dramatic climate action.
[ image from earlier post ]

Climate Emergency Declaration

UN secretary-general António Guterres recently spoke about the need for “a credible global response plan to get us on track” regarding the international goal of limiting the global temperature rise. “The science demands action, the law commands it,” Guterres said, in reference to a recent international court of justice ruling. “The economics compel it and people are calling for it.”

What could be added is that the situation is dire and unacceptably dangerous, and the precautionary principle necessitates rapid, comprehensive and effective action to reduce the damage and to improve the outlook, where needed in combination with a Climate Emergency Declaration, as described in posts such as this 2022 post and this one and as discussed in the Climate Plan group.


Links

• Danish Metereological Institute - Arctic sea ice thickness and volume 
https://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icethickness/thk.uk.php




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