NOAA report says Arctic warming ‘unprecedented’

Decline in sea ice is ‘outside of the range of natural variability,’ scientists say

Trump administration’s mixed views on climate change notwithstanding, a group of federal scientists on Tuesday released a stark report on the warming at the top of the planet, suggesting that it is unparalleled in more than a millennium.

“The Arctic is going through the most unprecedented transition in human history, and we need better observations to understand and predict how these changes will affect everyone, not just the people of the north,” Jeremy Mathis, director of the Arctic Research Program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said at the 2017 meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans.

Mathis was unveiling the 2017 Arctic Report Card, an annual NOAA report that documents the changing conditions for floating sea ice, the glaciers of Greenland, the thawing permafrost of the high latitudes, and more.

Mathis was introduced by retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet, the acting administrator of NOAA, who said the report was imporThe tant for two reasons that “directly relate to the priorities of this administration” — namely, its implications for national and economic security.

Gallaudet, a Trump appointee, brought up the example of naval submarines in the Arctic. He said operators had told him that the environment there is “the most hazardous (that) they’ve ever reported” because of the increased mobility of ice floes.

The new document finds that although the warming in the Arctic was not as stark in 2017 compared with a record 2016, the region continues to warm at a pace roughly double that of the rest of the planet.

A new section in the annual report puts the ongoing warming in a broader context and finds it extraordinary when compared with data from “paleo” records, which seek to determine what the Arctic’s temperature was like in ancient periods long predating modern thermometer observations.

That section observes that the current decline of Arctic sea ice is “outside of the range of natural variability and unprecedented” in the past 1,450 years, based on one reconstruction of past sea ice behavior.

In 2017, “multiyear ice,” which is older and lasts through the summer melt season, made up just 21 percent of total Arctic ice, Osborne said. In 1985, it was 45 percent.