The world’s boreal forest and other ecosystems are shifting north due to climate change. Will we welcome the new animals and plants that travel with them?
Verkhoyansk’s high temperature, which has yet to be confirmed, follows a six-month period of record heat in the region.
The remote Siberian town of Verkhoyansk is known for its extreme cold: Winter temperatures often dip below –50° Celsius. But on June 20, temperatures in the town soared to a high of 38° C (100.4° Fahrenheit). If confirmed by the World Meteorological Association, that marks the hottest temperature ever recorded north of the Arctic Circle.
Verkhoyansk has experienced extreme heat before: On July 25, 1988, the town hit a then-record of 37.3° C (99.1° F). The new high, which smashes that 32-year record, comes on the heels of a historically hot May around the globe, and especially in Siberia, which is in the grips of an ongoing heat wave.
Globally, May was 0.63 degrees C warmer than average May temperatures from 1981 to 2010, enough to set a new record, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. But in parts of Siberia, particularly in northwestern Siberia, May temperatures were as much as 10 degrees C higher than average. The anomaly was so marked that the region’s heat wave would represent a 1 in 100,000 year event — at least in a world without climate change, climate scientist Martin Stendel of the Danish Meteorological Institute in Copenhagen, tweeted on June 9. With climate change, however, such Arctic heat waves are expected to become more common, along with melting permafrost and increasing wildfires (SN: 8/2/19).
The new benchmark highlights how the Arctic region is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. Average temperatures in Siberia from December to May were also the warmest on record going back to 1979, according to Copernicus. When combined with data from NASA going back to 1880, the researchers suggest, this six-month period is likely unprecedented within the last 140 years.
Wildfires (red dots) burned across Siberia on June 21, fueled by record-high temperatures in May and drying soils. Climate change–driven warming in the Arctic is not only melting permafrost but also leading to earlier growing seasons (SN: 1/3/20). Combined with extreme heat, these factors are expected to lead to more wildfires in the region.
CREDIT: NASA WORLDVIEW, EARTH OBSERVING SYSTEM DATA AND INFORMATION SYSTEM (EOSDIS)
A new report from the United Nations shows that it’s basically game over for the Arctic as we know it.
Hello tipping point #ExtinctionLevelEvent
Even if carbon pollution magically stopped tomorrow, the region’s winters would still warm an astonishing 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) by century’s end, according to the UN. Meeting the Paris Agreement pledges—which do not get us to the two degree warming goal—would lead to that level of warming by midcentury and up to 9 degrees Celsius (16.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100, along the way unraveling one of the most fragile ecosystems on the planet and displacing people who have done very little to cause the disruption.
The report was released on Tuesday at a meeting of the United Nations Environment Program. The synthesis pulls together recent research and puts it all in one terrifying graphic-driven document. The litany of changes that have already occurred is unsettling, but the real shock is in what could come next.
The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe
Sea ice extent, which has shrunk about 40 percent since regular satellite monitoring began in 1979, could reach zero percent in summer as early as the 2030s.
Old, thick sea ice will likely be gone even sooner.
Permafrost, frozen ground full of carbon, could thaw out and destroy a third of all the infrastructure in the Arctic (and also release deadly strains of anthrax).
Rising temperatures could also unleash a host of other infectious diseases like Lyme disease, which is already on the rise in Canada.
“Insects like mosquitoes and ticks have the potential to connect the Arctic and tropics,” the authors write, which sounds like the sequel to Contagion.
And all these bleak findings don’t even get into other issues like plastic pollution, heavy metal contamination, or ocean acidification, all of which are and will continue to compound the region’s woes.
“The report concedes that the best way forward for the region with little sway on carbon pollution is adapting to whatever changes are coming its way.”
Bryan Thomas doesn't want any more "wishy-washy conversations about climate change." For four years, he has served as station chief of the Barrow Atmospheric Baseline Observatory, America's northernmost scientific outpost in its fastest-warming stat
Tuesday marked the release of yet another stark report detailing how the increased warming of our atmosphere is transforming the planet. The National Oceanic...
2,000 Elephants Every *Second* . . . stampeding into the ocean.
This is a conceptualization of the ice mass loss from Greenland this year; 250 billion tons of ice is lost from Greenland every year . . . and it’s accelerating.
