'The totality of the evidence is unambiguous': Arctic undergoing transformation
By
Adriana Navarro, AccuWeather staff writer
Published Dec 11, 2020 5:27 PM EST
|
Updated Dec 15, 2020 12:31 PM EST
The Arctic region is undergoing a transformation into a warmer and ecologically changed landscape amid rising temperatures -- and the resulting factors are exacerbating the change.
NOAA released its annual Arctic Report Card on Tuesday, Dec. 8, in which 133 scientists from 15 countries collaborated on detailing the changes in the Arctic from October 2019 to September 2020.
In this July 24, 2017 file photo, an iceberg floats past Bylot Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual Arctic Report Card, released on Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020, shows how warming temperatures in the Arctic are transforming the region's geography and ecosystems. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)
While the report can be split into several chapters, from rising temperatures and ice loss to the Siberian "zombie" wildfires to even bowhead whale populations, Rich Thoman, one of the report card's three editors, stressed that all of the results of rising temperatures were interconnected. What's more, they're cycling back into the process they originated from and becoming a part of the chain reaction.
"Taken as a whole, the story is unambiguous," Thoman said in a news release. "The transformation of the Arctic to a warmer, less frozen and biologically changed region is well underway."
"It's not even your father's Arctic."
It's been said before: the Arctic is growing warmer and warmer -- and it's heating up twice as much as the rest of the globe.
Still, the magnitude of the temperature anomalies seen across Siberia was one of the most shocking revelations to Thoman, from a climate perspective.
"We've seen parts of the Arctic have multi-month or a year of warm anomalies before like Alaska in 2016 and '19, but they were just so far above normal for so much of the year across," Thoman told AccuWeather in a Zoom interview. "Especially northwest Siberia -- both during the winter of 2019-20 and then the spring continuing right into the late summer and now reemerging again these very strong anomalies across that part of Eurasia."
In this July 10, 2020, file image taken from video provided by Russian Emergency Ministry, a multipurpose amphibious aircraft releases water to extinguish a fire in the Trans-Baikal National Park in Buryatia, southern Siberia, Russia. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual Arctic Report Card, released on Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020, shows how warming temperatures in the Arctic are transforming the region's geography and ecosystems. (Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service via AP, File)
This Arctic report card found that the average annual land surface air temperature in the Arctic recorded from October 2019 to September 2020 was the second-highest on record since at least 1900, falling behind the report card that covered 2015 into 2016.
Over the past 10 years, nine of the reports have documented air temperature increases of at least 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit above the 1981-2010 mean, and the past six years have exceeded previous records. Although records began in 1900, the agency has been publishing these annual reports over the past 15 years.
"The evidence is consistent -- all reflecting a warmer, less frozen, biologically-changed Arctic," Thoman said. "The most worrying thing is what we all already know, but the totality of the evidence is unambiguous in the way that the Arctic is going. It's not only not your grandfather's Arctic, it's not even your father's Arctic."
"What's happening in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic."
By the end of the summer of 2019, the Arctic sea ice extent was tied with 2007 and 2016 as the second-lowest since satellite observations began in 1979. The thickness of the sea ice had also decreased, according to the report, resulting in an ice cover that is more vulnerable to warming air and ocean temperatures.
The implications of this decline in ice span across the globe to varying degrees. Areas that previously would have been expected to have ice cover are exposed as open water -- causing some direct impacts and other subtler impacts.
Outside of climate and weather, Thoman pointed to national security as an issue.
This year, 62 vessels made the trip through the Northern Sea Route, or the ship passage along the Russian Arctic coast from the Kara Sea along Siberia to the Bering Strait -- more than any previous year, according to Thoman.
"That has implications not just for commercial shipping, but because the U.S. and Russian boarder in the Bering Strait gets down to three miles wide," Thoman said. "That means many of those vessels, many of which are these giant natural gas transport ships, 300 meters long, that's certainly an issue not just for Alaska, but you've got national security concerns in there, too."
In this July 27, 2017, file photo, an iceberg floats past the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica as it sails the Davis Strait toward Greenland. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual Arctic Report Card, released on Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020, shows how warming temperatures in the Arctic are transforming the region's geography and ecosystems. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)
From zombie fires to whale populations to melting ice -- all are connected
"The Siberian wildfires are not unconnected to the early sea ice loss, which is not unconnected to the winter and spring atmospheric anomalies -- the surface-air temperatures," Thoman said.
Although wildfires are not unheard of in the boreal forests of Siberia, the fires that burned from 2019 to 2020 were significantly larger than any previous year with reliable, comprehensive data. While those records only go back to 2000, Thoman added that the blazes seemed to be extremely large even to the people who lived there.
"Yes, they're used to wildfire, but not at this scale and, particularly this year, the duration where a number of the big wildfires this year were fires that had started in 2019," Thoman said, referring to what has been called "zombie fires."
Because of the very early snowmelt, because of the very early drying of the landscape, some were able to start up along with new fires.
In this Oct. 7, 2014 file photo, Kendra Burnell stands wearing a parka made by her grandmother as she poses for a photo in front of a bowhead whale in a field near Utqiagvik, then known as Barrow, Alaska. Federal officials are reviewing annual quotas for 11 Alaska Native villages whose subsistence hunters are authorized to harvest bowhead whales. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the public has until Sept. 14, 2017, to comment on catch limits for a six-year period to begin in 2019. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)
For other regions of the Arctic with more comprehensive data, such as Alaska, the frequency of wildfires burning large areas has about doubled since 1950, Thoman added.
The report also touched on bowhead whales, which are native to the Arctic. While populations have seen an increase in food as krill are more easily able to move northward with warming waters, predators of the bowhead whales, such as orcas, are also more easily able to travel farther north.
"All of these things are interconnected, and it's only kind of been our Western science way that we stovepipe these into different subject matters," Thoman said. "Of course in the real world, they aren't stovepiped, they're all interconnected right down to the health and recovery of bowhead whale," he added. "We can write a chapter on sea ice decline, but it's related to everything else going on in the Arctic."
Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.
Report a Typo
News / Weather News
'The totality of the evidence is unambiguous': Arctic undergoing transformation
By Adriana Navarro, AccuWeather staff writer
Published Dec 11, 2020 5:27 PM EST | Updated Dec 15, 2020 12:31 PM EST
The Arctic region is undergoing a transformation into a warmer and ecologically changed landscape amid rising temperatures -- and the resulting factors are exacerbating the change.
NOAA released its annual Arctic Report Card on Tuesday, Dec. 8, in which 133 scientists from 15 countries collaborated on detailing the changes in the Arctic from October 2019 to September 2020.
In this July 24, 2017 file photo, an iceberg floats past Bylot Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual Arctic Report Card, released on Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020, shows how warming temperatures in the Arctic are transforming the region's geography and ecosystems. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)
While the report can be split into several chapters, from rising temperatures and ice loss to the Siberian "zombie" wildfires to even bowhead whale populations, Rich Thoman, one of the report card's three editors, stressed that all of the results of rising temperatures were interconnected. What's more, they're cycling back into the process they originated from and becoming a part of the chain reaction.
"Taken as a whole, the story is unambiguous," Thoman said in a news release. "The transformation of the Arctic to a warmer, less frozen and biologically changed region is well underway."
"It's not even your father's Arctic."
It's been said before: the Arctic is growing warmer and warmer -- and it's heating up twice as much as the rest of the globe.
Still, the magnitude of the temperature anomalies seen across Siberia was one of the most shocking revelations to Thoman, from a climate perspective.
"We've seen parts of the Arctic have multi-month or a year of warm anomalies before like Alaska in 2016 and '19, but they were just so far above normal for so much of the year across," Thoman told AccuWeather in a Zoom interview. "Especially northwest Siberia -- both during the winter of 2019-20 and then the spring continuing right into the late summer and now reemerging again these very strong anomalies across that part of Eurasia."
In this July 10, 2020, file image taken from video provided by Russian Emergency Ministry, a multipurpose amphibious aircraft releases water to extinguish a fire in the Trans-Baikal National Park in Buryatia, southern Siberia, Russia. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual Arctic Report Card, released on Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020, shows how warming temperatures in the Arctic are transforming the region's geography and ecosystems. (Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service via AP, File)
This Arctic report card found that the average annual land surface air temperature in the Arctic recorded from October 2019 to September 2020 was the second-highest on record since at least 1900, falling behind the report card that covered 2015 into 2016.
Over the past 10 years, nine of the reports have documented air temperature increases of at least 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit above the 1981-2010 mean, and the past six years have exceeded previous records. Although records began in 1900, the agency has been publishing these annual reports over the past 15 years.
"The evidence is consistent -- all reflecting a warmer, less frozen, biologically-changed Arctic," Thoman said. "The most worrying thing is what we all already know, but the totality of the evidence is unambiguous in the way that the Arctic is going. It's not only not your grandfather's Arctic, it's not even your father's Arctic."
"What's happening in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic."
By the end of the summer of 2019, the Arctic sea ice extent was tied with 2007 and 2016 as the second-lowest since satellite observations began in 1979. The thickness of the sea ice had also decreased, according to the report, resulting in an ice cover that is more vulnerable to warming air and ocean temperatures.
The implications of this decline in ice span across the globe to varying degrees. Areas that previously would have been expected to have ice cover are exposed as open water -- causing some direct impacts and other subtler impacts.
Outside of climate and weather, Thoman pointed to national security as an issue.
This year, 62 vessels made the trip through the Northern Sea Route, or the ship passage along the Russian Arctic coast from the Kara Sea along Siberia to the Bering Strait -- more than any previous year, according to Thoman.
"That has implications not just for commercial shipping, but because the U.S. and Russian boarder in the Bering Strait gets down to three miles wide," Thoman said. "That means many of those vessels, many of which are these giant natural gas transport ships, 300 meters long, that's certainly an issue not just for Alaska, but you've got national security concerns in there, too."
In this July 27, 2017, file photo, an iceberg floats past the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica as it sails the Davis Strait toward Greenland. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual Arctic Report Card, released on Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020, shows how warming temperatures in the Arctic are transforming the region's geography and ecosystems. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)
From zombie fires to whale populations to melting ice -- all are connected
"The Siberian wildfires are not unconnected to the early sea ice loss, which is not unconnected to the winter and spring atmospheric anomalies -- the surface-air temperatures," Thoman said.
Although wildfires are not unheard of in the boreal forests of Siberia, the fires that burned from 2019 to 2020 were significantly larger than any previous year with reliable, comprehensive data. While those records only go back to 2000, Thoman added that the blazes seemed to be extremely large even to the people who lived there.
"Yes, they're used to wildfire, but not at this scale and, particularly this year, the duration where a number of the big wildfires this year were fires that had started in 2019," Thoman said, referring to what has been called "zombie fires."
Because of the very early snowmelt, because of the very early drying of the landscape, some were able to start up along with new fires.
In this Oct. 7, 2014 file photo, Kendra Burnell stands wearing a parka made by her grandmother as she poses for a photo in front of a bowhead whale in a field near Utqiagvik, then known as Barrow, Alaska. Federal officials are reviewing annual quotas for 11 Alaska Native villages whose subsistence hunters are authorized to harvest bowhead whales. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the public has until Sept. 14, 2017, to comment on catch limits for a six-year period to begin in 2019. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)
For other regions of the Arctic with more comprehensive data, such as Alaska, the frequency of wildfires burning large areas has about doubled since 1950, Thoman added.
The report also touched on bowhead whales, which are native to the Arctic. While populations have seen an increase in food as krill are more easily able to move northward with warming waters, predators of the bowhead whales, such as orcas, are also more easily able to travel farther north.
"All of these things are interconnected, and it's only kind of been our Western science way that we stovepipe these into different subject matters," Thoman said. "Of course in the real world, they aren't stovepiped, they're all interconnected right down to the health and recovery of bowhead whale," he added. "We can write a chapter on sea ice decline, but it's related to everything else going on in the Arctic."
Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.
Report a Typo