by It doesn’t matter the rest of the World, this summer was the hottest on record in the Arctic, where scientists say human-caused climate change is warming things up faster than anywhere else on earth. Marked consequences of this are already being seen and felt in communities in and around the northernmost polar region of the planet, and their domino effects could be more severe and widespread than they are now.
Citing its latest Arctic Report Card – an annual assessment of how the region is doing environmentallyand released this week – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned that carbon emissions will not continue, in the United States and beyond, driving only major changes in the country. An arctic that contributes to extreme weather events in places far away. Officials with the agency urged people to take action.
“The overwhelming message from this year’s report card is that the time for action is now,” NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad said in a statement. “NOAA and our federal partners have increased our support and collaboration with state, tribal and local communities to help build climate resilience. At the same time, we as a nation and a global community must reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are driving the these changes greatly reduce.”
In its 18th year, the Arctic Report Card summarizes the work of 82 authors from 13 countries. Contributors to the latest issue shared several takeaways, including the fact that Arctic summer surface air temperatures were among the warmest observed in the Arctic since record-keeping began more than 100 years ago, as well as the fact that 2023 was the same. the sixth warmest year for the region overall.
The report comes after the United Nations weather agency confirmed earlier this year that the planet had experienced its hottest three-month stretch of summer on record, with experts drawing specific links between rising temperatures and the devastating wildfires that scorched vast areas of it. land over continents and the air quality decreased to a point that posed a threat to human health. And, recently, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service announced that 2023 was the hottest year on record worldwidetoo.
Places inside and just outside the Arctic circle faced consistent weather extremes this year, the new report noted, as precipitation in those areas rose above the long-term average during all four seasons. Local communities and indigenous peoples throughout the Polar region continued to suffer extreme consequences from the environmental changes due to climate change, he said. Prominent examples of this are storms of increased intensity and frequency, as well as unpredictable fishing conditions that greatly affect the food security and business of Alaska Natives.
The Alaska Arctic Observatory and Information Hub added its observations to the Arctic Report Card in 2023 for the first time. The observatory, which works with coastal Native observers to document long-term environmental changes and their impacts in northern Alaska, said the area is experiencing “sea ice loss, warmer air and ocean temperatures, changing wind patterns, and intensity and increased frequency of coastal storms that contribute to flooding and erosion.”
The observatory noted that the extreme weather is affecting cultural infrastructure, traditional harvests and activities, and the safety of travel by land and sea. Included in the report was a message sent by one observer, Bobby Schaeffer, to the Alaska observatory in September 2022, which said, “We’ve had three strong storms. The July 18th storm had the strongest winds. Southwest winds up to 50 mph into the storm surge that set the record… Wind, huge surf and lots of rain The second storm hit us on the 28th of July and Merbok on the 14th of September [to 18]… I think we’ve lost more land to the ocean than ever.”
Changes in the Arctic region have had a direct impact on some of the extreme weather this summer across large and more southern parts of North America, with experts linking “unprecedented” polar temperature rises to the warmer spring and early snowmelt across the north Canada laid the foundation for it worst wildfire season until now.
The consequences could be more far-reaching, as the 2023 report showed a continued decrease in sea ice extent and melting at the highest point of the Greenland ice sheet — something that has only happened five times in 34 years. A separate study on melting in Greenland, published in November, showed that ice shelves in the region have lost more than 1/3 of their volume over the past 50 years due to rising temperatures. If that trend continues, scientists have warned of “dramatic consequences” for the planet, since the Greenland ice sheet is one of the major contributors to rising sea levels around the world.
The 2023 Arctic Report Card highlighted communities and organizations, like the Alaska Arctic Observatory, that are working on solutions to combat climate change and its far-reaching impacts.
In Finland, an organization called the Snowchange Cooperative has also helped create massive improvements to sprawling peatlands degraded by mining and industrial forestry. Rural Finnish and Sámi communities worked with the organization to successfully restore more than 100,000 acres of Finnish peatlands that had been made and drained when the report was written. Another rural community to the north in remote Svalbard, Norway — the fastest-growing place on earth — is also taking significant steps. cut emissions which is melting the surrounding glaciers.
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