Global warming has profoundly transformed Arctic in just 15 years
The Arctic as we once knew it, an inhospitable, barely accessible and icebound place, is gone. Climate change has transformed it into a region that can heat up to 100 degrees, is beset by ferocious wildfires, and is covered in permafrost that is no longer permanent. The sea ice cover that has long defined the Far North is fast disappearing. This is the picture from a new international scientific assessment released Tuesday.
The Arctic as a whole is warming at nearly three times the rate of the rest of the world, owing to feedback loops between snow, ice and land cover. This rapid warming, studies have shown, is largely the result of increased emissions of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and natural gas.
This year, the biggest Arctic climate extremes were the persistent, dramatically warmer than average conditions in the Siberian Arctic, which had a domino effect that led to record-low sea ice in the adjacent Kara and Laptev Seas, a wildfire season that defied historical norms, melting permafrost and changes in wildlife populations.
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