Current Events > The past five years have been the five warmest on record in the arctic

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/climate/arctic-warming.html

The Arctic has been warmer over the last five years than at any time since records began in 1900, and the region is warming at twice the rate as the rest of the planet, scientists said Tuesday.

The rising air temperatures are having profound effects on sea ice, and on life on land and in the ocean, the scientists said. The changes can be felt far beyond the region, especially since the changing Arctic climate may be influencing extreme weather events around the world.

Those assessments were part of the latest Arctic Report Card, issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a federal agency, and presented Tuesday at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington.

Were seeing this continued increase of warmth pervading across the entire Arctic system, said Emily Osborne, lead editor of the report and manager of NOAAs Arctic Research Program. Thats having implications for both ocean and terrestrial systems.

The new edition of the report, which is published annually, does not present a radical break with past installments, but it shows that troublesome trends wrought by climate change are intensifying. Air temperatures in the Arctic in 2018 will be the second-warmest ever recorded, the report said, behind only 2016.

Susan M. Natali, an Arctic scientist at Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts who was not involved in the research, said the report was another warning going unheeded. Every time you see a report, things get worse, and were still not taking any action, she said. It adds support that these changes are happening, that they are observable.

The warmer Arctic air causes the jet stream to become sluggish and unusually wavy, the researchers said. That has possible connections to extreme weather events elsewhere on the globe, including last winters severe storms in the United States.

The jet steam normally acts as a kind of atmospheric spinning lasso that encircles and contains the cold air near the pole; a weaker, wavering jet stream can allow Arctic blasts to travel south in winter and can stall weather systems in the summer, among other effects.

The more rapid warming in the upper north, known as Arctic amplification, is tied to many factors, including the simple fact that snow and ice reflect a lot of sunlight, while open water, which is darker, absorbs more heat. As sea ice melts, less ice and more open water create a feedback loop of more melting that leads to progressively less ice and more open water.
...
The federal government has issued the report card since 2006. It has continued to do so under the Trump administration, which has approved other scientific reports about global warming and the human greenhouse gas emissions that cause it, despite President Trumps rejection of climate science.

Over all, the effects of persistent Arctic warming continue to mount, the new report said. Continued warming of the Arctic atmosphere and ocean are driving broad change in the environmental system in predicted and, also, unexpected ways.

Some of the findings in the research, provided by 81 scientists in 12 countries, included:

The wintertime maximum extent of sea ice in the region, in March of this year, was the second lowest in 39 years of record keeping.

Ice that persists year after year, forming thick layers, is disappearing from the Arctic. This is important because the very old ice tends to resist melting; without it, melting accelerates. Old ice made up less than 1 percent of the Arctic ice pack this year, a decline of 95 percent over the last 33 years.

The lack of ice and surge of warmth coincides with rapid expansion of algae species in the Arctic Ocean, associated with harmful blooms that can poison marine life and people who eat the contaminated seafood.

---

How long have temperatures been recorded in the Arctic?
---

KillerSlaw posted...

How long have temperatures been recorded in the Arctic?

Literally the first sentence
---

KillerSlaw posted...

How long have temperatures been recorded in the Arctic?

Literally the first line in the article

Could you guys at least pretend that you read the opening post
---

Them damned Chinese are hoaxin everybody with this climate change boogeyman in order to destroy America!
---

Trumps Antarctica
---

PleaseClap posted...

KillerSlaw posted...

How long have temperatures been recorded in the Arctic?

Literally the first line in the article

Could you guys at least pretend that you read the opening post

I imagine many of them just simply don't know how to read well.
---

Reminder that I'm anti Trump, but yeah, fuck you guys too because I missed it skimming the article for the important bits.
---

Living really far north, climate change is very apparent
---