‘Last Ice area’ of Arctic

In news- According to scientists, a part of the Arctic’s ice called “Last Ice Area”, has melted before expected.

Key updates-

World Wildlife Fund (WWF)-Canada was the first to call this area the ‘Last Ice Area’.
This region is located north of Ellesmere Island in the Canadian territory of Nunavut and Greenland.
The area is important because it was thought to be able to help ice-dependent species as ice in the surrounding areas melted away.
The area is used by polar bears to hunt for seals who use ice to build dens for their offspring and Walruses use the surface of the ice for foraging.
In 2019, the Government of Canada in cooperation with Inuit leadership announced the creation of a new Marine Conservation Area that will cover 319,000 square kilometers of this habitat.
According to National Geographic, while climate projections forecast the total disappearance of summer ice in the Arctic by the year 2040, the only place that would be able to withstand a warming climate would be the “Last Ice Area”.

It is called so because floating sea ice there is usually so thick that it’s likely to withstand global warming for decades.
In a paper published in the journal “Communications Earth & Environment”, researchers have noted that in August 2020 the area where the Last Ice Area (LIA) is located, experienced a record low concentration of sea ice.
The main cause for the sudden ice loss was extraordinary strong winds that pushed the ice out the region and down the coast of Greenland.
About 80 percent of thinning can be attributed to weather-related factors such as winds that break up and move the ice around.
The remaining 20 percent can be attributed to longer-term thinning of the ice due to global warming.