The Arctic experienced record air temperatures and a new low in peak ice extent during 2015, with scientists warning that climate change is having “profound effects” on the entire marine ecosystem and the indigenous communities that rely upon it.
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According to the annual Arctic Report Card study, air temperatures over land across the Arctic region were 1.3 degrees above average in 2015, breaking 115 years of record keeping. And combined with projections of continued warming temperatures, we can expect to see further change throughout the Arctic in the future.
“The Arctic is warming twice as fast as other parts of the planet, which has ramifications for global security, climate, commerce, and trade”, said Rick Spinrad, chief scientist for NOAA.
“This year’s report shows the importance of global collaboration on sustained, long-term observing programs that provide insights to inform decisions by citizens, policymakers, and industry”, he said.
According to a report from the UPI, Their work, shared Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco, confirms what scientists have been saying about the arctic for some time now – that it is experiencing rapid and dramatic change as a result of global warming. The report comes just days after reaching the Paris Climate Agreement. Baffin Bay or West Greenland, as well as the Bering Strait, felt warmer-than-normal temperatures by several degrees.
The report’s authors believe that these findings could contribute to both warming seas and higher sea levels around the globe.
“Unfortunately, we passed some critical points on that”, Jim Overland, a NOAA oceanographer, said at the news conference. “That’s based upon the Carbon dioxide that we’ve already put into the atmosphere and will be putting in for the next 20 years”.
“In 2014, the year for which we have the most-recent complete record, the combined discharge of the eight largest Arctic rivers was 10 percent greater than the average of 1980-1989”, Jeffries said.
This thinner, younger ice is more likely to melt in the summer than thicker ice, said the report.
The news was cheerier for the walruses of the Svalbard archipelago, on the Atlantic side of the Arctic.
In NOAA’s researchers view, the only way to stabilize the Arctic ice is to reduce average worldwide temperatures, and that could take years. When ice sheets fade, walruses are exposed to the land, which is unsafe.
The minimum sea ice extent, measured on September 11, 2015, was the fourth lowest in the satellite record since 1979.
This year, over half of the surface of the Greenland ice sheet melted, representing its first significant melting since 2012.
It’s not clear exactly why the tundra is changing; everything from aerosols in the air to snow cover, cloudiness and other conditions can affect vegetation, Epstein said.
NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. How this trend might effect food chains in the arctic is unclear. Walruses are one of those animals that are dependant upon sea ice for their courtship rituals and reproductive functions. Overcrowding is also a concern, as the sea mammals have been observed rushing onto beaches by the thousands as previous icy haunts melt into the sea. From October 2014 to September 2015, it had the warmest average temperature on record going back to 1900, as the planet heads toward its warmest year on record.
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Besides a bad sign for our climate decades into the future, the retreating sea ice is bad in the short term for animals like walruses, which rely on the sea ice to give birth and to get out of the water when space on land is scarce.
