Hey there Prince William (
@KensingtonRoyal).
I have a few facts to share with you today. I hope you see this and can offer some commentary.
1️⃣ Arctic sea ice extent (SIE) has decreased since satellite monitoring of began in the 1970s, but there has been little change in the September minimum for more than 18 years, as confirmed by Stern et al. (2025), published in Geophysical Research Letters.
🗨️ “𝑊𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑎 𝑟𝑒𝑔𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑓𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑒𝑝𝑡𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝐴𝑟𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑐 𝑠𝑒𝑎-𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑒𝑥𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡 (𝑆𝐼𝐸) 𝑜𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 2007. 𝐵𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 2007, 𝑆𝑒𝑝𝑡𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑆𝐼𝐸 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑥𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑦... 𝑺𝒊𝒏𝒄𝒆 2007, 𝑺𝒆𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝑺𝑰𝑬 𝒉𝒂𝒔 𝒇𝒍𝒖𝒄𝒕𝒖𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒆𝒙𝒉𝒊𝒃𝒊𝒕𝒔 𝒏𝒐 𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒈-𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒎 𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒅..”
🔗
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.…
This is significant because a decade ago, the CMIP5 models predicted that a 20-year-long pause in sea ice decline had about a 5% chance of occurring under the current emissions pathway and 0% under SSP5-8.5 / RCP8.5 (a favorite among climate “scientists”).
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nature.com/articles/nclimate…
The Arctic was also often ice-free during the summer months in the Early Holocene Thermal Maximum between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago (e.g., Stranne et al., 2014), albeit that was due to higher insolation.
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sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
Still, Earth didn’t boil due to a loss in albedo because negative feedback mechanisms kicked in, notably the Planck radiative feedback. Through the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, it maintains that if the temperature of a body starts to go up, then the emitted terrestrial longwave (infrared) radiation will increase such that it is proportional to the fourth power of its absolute temperature, P/A = σT⁴.
2️⃣ Ocean currents are fine.
The fearmongering over the collapse of the Atlantic Multidecadal Overturning Oscillation (AMOC) is just that—a scare story.
A paper published in Nature Communications back in January found that the AMOC is actually more stable than previously thought. Using air-sea heat flux in the North Atlantic (NATL) from 26.5-50°N as an AMOC strength proxy, they found that there was no AMOC weakening between 1963 and 2017. They argued that this is a better proxy than sea surface temperatures (SSTs) that other studies have used to generate alarm and garner widespread media attention.
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nature.com/articles/s41467-0…
These findings are corroborated by recent research (e.g., Volkov et al., 2024).
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nature.com/articles/s41467-0…
As for future risk, well projections are not reality. They are hypothetical future scenarios that may or may not happen. But for what it's worth, at least one modeling study suggests that the AMOC is actually resilient to a strong greenhouse warming, and that the worst-case scenarios are unlikely.
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nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
3️⃣ As for the Amazon, well, are you aware that an eight-mile strip of rainforest was just felled to build a four-lane highway to alleviate traffic congestion at the same conference you’re speaking at?
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bbc.com/news/articles/c9vy19…
Nobody believes your doom and gloom anymore.
NOW - Prince William at the COP30 climate summit: "The melting of polar ice, the loss of the Amazon, the disruption of ocean currents, these are not distant threats. They are fast approaching and will affect every one of us, no matter where we live."