As sea ice disappears, Greenland melts and wildfires burn the planet’s northernmost trees, new research confirms what scientists are warning: the Arctic has warmed much faster than the rest of the world in recent decades. .
The phenomenon, called Arctic amplification, is caused by heat-trapping emissions from burning fossil fuels.
The pace of temperature rise around the North Pole in recent decades has been four times that of the rest of the planet, researchers at the Finnish Meteorological Institute found in a study published Thursday.
Another problem: The climate models, which scientists have used to predict long-term changes, are not capturing this high rate of warming, lead author and researcher Mika Rantanen told CNN which was part of the motivation of this study.
This is worrying because if models can’t recreate what’s happening now, scientists can’t trust their long-term predictions.
“Because of this discrepancy, we’ve decided that this needs to be fixed,” Rantenen said. “This needs to be updated.”
The study, published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, looked at temperature trends in the Arctic Circle between 1979 and 2021 — the modern era of satellite data.
They found that the rate of warming is particularly high in the Eurasian Arctic region, especially the Barents Sea, which has warmed seven times faster than the global average.
Recent data has revealed that the average annual temperature in the Barents region has risen by up to 2.7°C every decade for the past 20 to 40 years, making the Barents Sea and its islands the fastest warming place on the planet.
Climate change triggered a rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic region, which in turn amplified global warming. Bright white sea ice reflects solar energy back into space, but when it melts, the dark ocean absorbs that heat.
John Walsh, chief scientist at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said the study’s timeframe actually focused on the Arctic amplification phenomenon, which has been more significant in recent decades than in the early to mid-2000s. 20th century.
“Arctic amplification is unmistakable,” Walsh, who was not involved in the study, told CNN . “It’s more than a factor of one; It’s a factor of several — whether it’s two, three or four — and I don’t think that changes the fact that the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the world.”
Last year’s annual Arctic bulletin, published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, found that the Arctic region is warming faster than the rest of the Earth and is rapidly losing ice cover, turning the typically frozen landscape into a greener and browner landscape than it was just about a decade ago.
All of these findings also reflect the latest UN report on the climate crisis, which found that the Arctic will continue to warm faster than the rest of the planet as long as humans continue to burn fossil fuels and release greenhouse gases. In the atmosphere.
“The Arctic is actually more sensitive to global warming than previously thought,” Rantanen said. “Only time will tell. Let’s see how this evolves in the future.”
Source: CNN Brasil
