‘A real hot spot’: Arctic is warming three times quicker than the planet
The Arctic has warmed three times more quickly than the planet as a whole, and faster than previously thought, a report warned on Thursday.
Arctic sea ice looks set to be an early victims of rising temperatures, with each fraction of a degree making a big difference: the chance of it disappearing entirely in summer is 10 times greater if the Earth warms by two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels compared to 1.5°C, the goal set by the 2015 Paris Accord.
The alarming finding comes from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) in a report timed to coincide with a ministerial meeting this week of the Arctic Council in Reykjavik, which gathers countries bordering the region.
“The Arctic is a real hot spot for climate warming,” said Jason Box, a glaciologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
In less than half a century, from 1971 to 2019, the Arctic’s average annual temperature rose by 3.1°C, compared to 1°C for the planet as a whole.
That’s more than previously suspected. In a 2019 report on
Earth’s frozen spaces, the UN’S Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that Arctic surface air temperature has likely increased “by more than double the global average”.
According to researchers, a turning point came in 2004 when the temperature in the Arctic surged for largely unexplained reason.
Since then, warming has continued at a rate 30% higher than in previous decades.
During the summer months from June to September, there is added heat from the ocean, which is increasingly free of ice and the insulation it provides.