Climate change in the Arctic
Due to climate change in the Arctic, this polar region is expected to become "profoundly different" by 2050.[1]: 2321 The speed of change is "among the highest in the world",[1]: 2321 with the rate of warming being 3-4 times faster than the global average.[2][3][4][5] This warming has already resulted in the profound Arctic sea ice decline, the accelerating melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the thawing of the permafrost landscape.[1]: 2321 [6] These ongoing transformations are expected to be irreversible for centuries or even millennia.[1]: 2321
Natural life in the Arctic is affected greatly. As the tundra warms, its soil becomes more hospitable to earthworms and larger plants,[7] and the boreal forests spread to the north - yet this also makes the landscape more prone to wildfires, which take longer to recover from than in the other regions. Beavers also take advantage of this warming to colonize the Arctic rivers, and their dams contributing to methane emissions due to the increase in stagnant waters.[8] The Arctic Ocean has experienced a large increase in the marine primary production as warmer waters and less shade from sea ice benefit phytoplankton.[1]: 2326 [9] At the same time, it is already less alkaline than the rest of the global ocean, so ocean acidification caused by the increasing CO2 concentrations is more severe, threatening some forms of zooplankton such as pteropods.[1]: 2328
The Arctic Ocean is expected to see its first ice-free events in the near future - most likely before 2050, and potentially in the late 2020s or early 2030s.[10] This would have no precedent in the last 700,000 years.[11][12] Some sea ice regrows every Arctic winter, but such events are expected to occur more and more frequently as the warming increases. This has great implications for the fauna species which are dependent on sea ice, such as polar bears. For humans, trade routes across the ocean will become more convenient. Yet, multiple countries have infrastructure in the Arctic which is worth billions of dollars, and it is threatened with collapse as the underlying permafrost thaws. The Arctic's indigenous people have a long relationship with its icy conditions, and face the loss of their cultural heritage.
Further, there are numerous implications which go beyond the Arctic region. Sea ice loss not only enhances warming in the Arctic but also adds to global temperature increase through the ice-albedo feedback. Permafrost thaw results in emissions of CO2 and methane that are comparable to those of major countries. Greenland melting is a significant contributor to global sea level rise. If the warming exceeds - or thereabouts, there is a significant risk of the entire ice sheet being lost over an estimated 10,000 years, adding up to global sea levels. Warming in the Arctic may affect the stability of the jet stream, and thus the extreme weather events in midlatitude regions, but there is only "low confidence" in that hypothesis.
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Research[edit]
Individual countries within the Arctic zone, Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States (Alaska) conduct independent research through a variety of organizations and agencies, public and private, such as Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute. Countries who do not have Arctic claims, but are close neighbors, conduct Arctic research as well, such as the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration (CAA). The United States's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) produces an Arctic Report Card annually, containing peer-reviewed information on recent observations of environmental conditions in the Arctic relative to historical records.[213][214] International cooperative research between nations has also become increasingly important:
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The 2021 Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) report by an international team of more than 60 experts, scientists, and indigenous knowledge keepers from Arctic communities, was prepared from 2019 to 2021.[218]: vii It is a follow-up report of the 2017 assessment, "Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic" (SWIPA).[218]: vii The 2021 IPCC AR6 WG1 Technical Report confirmed that "[o]bserved and projected warming" were ""strongest in the Arctic".[219]: 29 According to an 11 August 2022 article published in Nature, there have been numerous reports that the Arctic is warming from twice to three times as fast as the global average since 1979, but the co-authors cautioned that the recent report of the "four-fold Arctic warming ratio" was potentially an "extremely unlikely event".[220] The annual mean Arctic Amplification (AA) index had "reached values exceeding four" from c. 2002 through 2022, according to a July 2022 article in Geophysical Research Letters.[221]: 1 [222]
The 14 December 2021 16th Arctic Report Card produced by the United States's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and released annually, examined the "interconnected physical, ecological and human components" of the circumpolar Arctic.[223][46] The report said that the 12 months between October 2020 and September 2021 were the "seventh warmest over Arctic land since the record began in 1900".[223] The 2017 report said that the melting ice in the warming Arctic was unprecedented in the past 1500 years.[213][214] NOAA's State of the Arctic Reports, starting in 2006, updates some of the records of the original 2004 and 2005 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) reports by the intergovernmental Arctic Council and the non-governmental International Arctic Science Committee.[224]
A 2022 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report "Spreading Like Wildfire: The Rising Threat Of Extraordinary Landscape Fires" said that smoke from wildfires around the world created a positive feedback loop that is a contributing factor to Arctic melting.[225][124] The 2020 Siberian heatwave was "associated with extensive burning in the Arctic Circle".[225]: 36 Report authors said that this extreme heat event was the first to demonstrate that it would have been "almost impossible" without anthropogenic emissions and climate change.[226][225]: 36
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