United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres this week warned, from a video call with scientists trapped in Arctic ice, that political leaders do not yet grasp how serious the climate situation is, according to UN News.

The call came ahead of the COP31 United Nations climate conference. UN News did not say when the conference will take place. It said world leaders will gather in Antalya, Türkiye.

Guterres spoke with Maxime Geoffroy, chief scientist of Tara Polaris I. The expedition is the first of 10 planned voyages in a 20-year international programme to study how the Arctic Ocean is changing. UN News said Guterres asked what message he should carry to leaders about an Arctic warming three to four times as fast as the planet as a whole.

“I think that, unfortunately, the political leadership in this world is not yet entirely aware of how serious the situation is,” Guterres said.

Geoffroy’s reply, as UN News reported it, was that what happens in the Arctic does not stay there. He said changes under the ship could reach the world’s oceans, climate and biodiversity.

Twelve people and a dog named Örkki are aboard Tara Polar Station, a French research vessel 26 metres long, according to UN News. The ship left Norway in August so it could freeze into the ice. It is now locked to a sheet of sea ice over water more than 2,500 metres deep and drifts with wind and current. In the polar night there is no sunlight to mark the days.

The crew spent three weeks along Russia’s northern coast, then moved into the ice pack looking for a large flat floe. Geoffroy said the ship reached 82 degrees north by following open channels between floes. UN News said the Chinese icebreaker Xue Long 2 helped the station through the ice for about 24 hours before the crew let the vessel freeze in on purpose.

UN News contrasted the voyage with Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, whose ship froze into the ice in 1893 hundreds of kilometres farther south. Guterres said one of the things that has scared him most is the prospect that in a number of years there might be no ice in the Arctic during summer. Geoffroy said the white ice sends much of the sun’s energy back to space, while open water takes in that heat and speeds further melting. Ocean currents can carry that heat beyond the North Pole. He said models exist, but scientists do not know when the effects will arrive or what they will be.

The programme involves 80 scientists and about 220 research protocols, from how marine life responds to warming to how the ocean stores carbon, UN News said. Researchers still do not know how many fish live in the central Arctic Ocean, or whether those waters could support fishing without harming fragile ecosystems. Geoffroy also raised the idea that life on Earth might have begun in sea ice, pointing to organisms that survive extreme cold with antifreeze proteins.

On the way north, the scientists saw oil tankers using the Northeast Passage along Russia’s Arctic coast. Geoffroy told Guterres the traffic is already happening, not only a forecast. UN News said an oil spill there could be disastrous because petroleum can stay trapped in ice for a long time, threatening marine life and making cleanup exceptionally hard.

Guterres also pointed to tensions around Greenland and to countries treating the Arctic as a security issue, which he said could threaten the environment scientists are trying to understand. Geoffroy, whose expedition includes researchers from 12 countries, asked whether science could narrow those divides. Guterres called the fight for truth and for science a central battle. He accused powerful economic interests, especially those tied to fossil fuels, of trying to hide scientific evidence and weaken its place in public debate, according to UN News.

Geoffroy said climate politics had moved from denial to delay and to what he called green hushing, and that climate action had slipped down political agendas despite decades of warnings.

Asked what he would tell leaders at COP31, Geoffroy said the findings need to be trusted, followed and supported. Guterres said visits to Antarctica and the Himalayas, where he saw glaciers retreat, and the refusal of some leaders to act, had left him with urgency and anger. “It’s an existential battle,” he said.