Thank you for visiting nature. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer. In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. According to climate models, the Lincoln Sea, bordering northern Greenland and Canada, will be the final stronghold of perennial Arctic sea-ice in a warming climate.
However, recent observations of prolonged periods of open water raise concerns regarding its long-term stability. Modelling studies suggest a transition from perennial to seasonal sea-ice during the Early Holocene, a period of elevated global temperatures around 10, years ago.
Here we show marine proxy evidence for the disappearance of perennial sea-ice in the southern Lincoln Sea during the Early Holocene, which suggests a widespread transition to seasonal sea-ice in the Arctic Ocean. Seasonal sea-ice conditions were tightly coupled to regional atmospheric temperatures. The observed demise of Arctic sea-ice in recent decades 1 has had major impacts on the climate, the ecosystem, the livelihood and cultural heritage of Indigenous peoples, and global geopolitical interests 2 , 3 , 4.
As anthropogenic warming continues, climate models suggest that Arctic multi-year ice MYI will survive the longest along the northern coastline of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and Greenland 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , Today this region, also known as the last ice area hereafter referred to as LIA , hosts the thickest and oldest sea-ice in the Arctic Ocean 12 , This is due to cold temperatures and the main Arctic Ocean surface circulation, dominated by the Beaufort Gyre and the Transpolar Drift, transporting sea-ice toward the LIA 13 , In recent years, more and more evidence for a changing sea-ice cover in the Lincoln Sea region has emerged, questioning its long-term stability under a continued anthropogenic warming.
Prolonged periods of open water are reported from east of the Lincoln Sea and north of Ellesmere Island 17 , 18 and increased ice motion 19 and loss of the oldest MYI 12 are associated with recurrent failure of the Nares Strait ice arches 20 , 21 , These phenomena are likely related to both physical and thermodynamic processes, where anomalous atmospheric circulation and break-up and export of sea-ice by winds 17 , 21 causes an increase in the open water and thin ice area fractions enhancing ice melt The dashed pink line outlines the region of the last ice area LIA that lies within the Arctic Ocean proper.
