2023-12-15 10:51:43
This year the North Pole experienced the hottest summer ever recorded (since 1900). Polar researchers are concerned regarding the rate of warming.
The Arctic is rewetting and greening, the sea ice is disappearing, the ice cap on Greenland is melting, millions of kilometers of permafrost are thawing. On Spitsbergen, every tourist can spot a polar bear and researchers no longer need gloves. With an average of 6.4 degrees, the North Pole experienced the warmest summer ever recorded.
The conclusions of The Arctic Report Card – the annual report from the US government service National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on the state of the Arctic – are no longer surprising. The average temperature has been five times higher since 1950 than this year, the highest point of the Greenland ice sheet has already risen above freezing four times earlier, and the amount of sea ice already reached a record low in 2012 following the first low in 2007.
On Spitsbergen, the average temperature has already risen almost 7 degrees
But that doesn’t lessen the concerns of polar scientists. “If the sea ice disappears, it opens up opportunities for the sun to warm the ocean because the sunlight is not reflected by the ice,” explains Laura de Steur. As a researcher at the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromsø, she saw last summer on satellite images that the ice at the North Pole is melting faster than predicted in climate models. “Due to the so-called albedo effect, if the ice does not reflect sunlight, the ice melts even faster. The warm water also makes it more difficult for new sea ice to form in winter.”
The lid between the relatively warm water and the cold air is gone, says Maarten Loonen, associate professor of Arctic ecology at the University of Groningen. “As a result, temperatures in the Arctic are rising much faster than elsewhere on Earth. On Spitsbergen, where I do my research, the average temperature has already risen almost 7 degrees. In 1990 I heard ice falling from the glaciers, now they are three kilometers away. I haven’t needed gloves all summer this year.”
Weather extremes are also increasing in Europe
Scientists are particularly concerned regarding the acceleration in warming. As a result, weather extremes in Europe are also increasing, as the KNMI predicts in its new climate scenarios. “The temperature increase at the North Pole has an effect on the entire Northern Hemisphere,” says De Steur. “At the North Pole the winters are getting shorter, so the cold polar environment disappears, it becomes Atlantic. The Barents Sea is warming and ecosystems are changing. Cod is moving north, so fishing is shifting, the ocean is acidifying due to the absorption of extra CO2, making it more difficult for small organisms to grow, and the habitats of whales, polar bears and seals are disappearing.”
What the ice caps do in Antarctica and Greenland is also relevant for the Netherlands, Loonen explains. “The number of melting days at the highest part of the Greenland ice sheet is increasing and if this decreases, it will happen faster and faster. It gets 1 degree colder for every 100 meters, and the ice is now still 3 kilometers thick, so that’s a difference of 30 degrees. If the top of the cap permanently rises above freezing, the process is irreversible and sea levels might rise as much as 7 meters.”
However, the consequences are not that predictable. “Ice on land is mass and mass is gravity,” Loonen teaches. “We are already measuring with the help of satellites that gravity is decreasing. This gravity ensures that there is now a lot of water around Greenland. But what happens when gravity changes? That can have major consequences.”
Loonen quotes German climate expert Stefan Rahmstorf, who noted earlier this year that the long-standing upward trend in global warming has suddenly become a jump this year. “’I can’t explain it by CO2 emissions, and that makes me anxious,’ said this professor. 2023 is a shocking year. We jump out of the models.”
Also read:
It is really our emissions that make it very difficult for the polar bear
How much exactly are polar bears affected by the greenhouse gases that humans emit? A new study provides the answer.
Whatever we do for the climate, a large part of Antarctica will melt
Even if global CO2 emissions are drastically reduced, a significant part of Antarctica will still melt, researchers say. The resulting sea level rise has major consequences.
As the ice in Antarctica melts, tourism is growing. ‘It has to get crazier’
As the ice melts, tourism to Antarctica is increasing rapidly. The Netherlands is investing four million euros in large-scale international research into the impact of tourism. Why is the South Pole so popular?
1702791208
#North #Pole #warmer #consequences #ominous
