Wall Street Journal (July 31)
“Once a lonely and largely impassable maritime expanse where countries worked together to extract natural resources, the Arctic is increasingly contested territory. As sea ice melts and traffic increases on the southern edges of the Arctic Ocean, governments are maneuvering in ways that mirror great-power rivalries in lower latitudes.”
Tags: Arctic, Contested, Governments, Great-power rivalries, Impassable, Lonely, Maneuvering, Maritime expanse, Melts, Natural resources, Sea ice, Traffic
World Economic Forum (December 10)
“Greenhouse gas emissions reached a new high last year, putting the world on track for an average temperature rise of 3 degrees Celsius.” The UNEP report is only “the latest to suggest the world is hurtling toward extreme climate change” and comes on the heels “of sobering weather extremes, including rapid ice loss in the Arctic as well as record heat waves and wildfires in Siberia and the U.S. West.”
Tags: 3°C, Arctic, Climate change, Emissions, GHG, Heat waves, Hurtling, Ice loss, Record, Rise, Siberia, Sobering, Temperature, UNEP, Weather extremes, Wildfires
The Science Times (September 21)
“The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitory Service in Europe has monitored over 100 wildfires in the Arctic” since June. “The ‘zombie fires’ have been the worst this year since reliable monitoring began in 2003.” In June alone, the Arctic fires had already released an amount of carbon comparable “to how much the greenhouse gas is emitted in an entire year from smaller nations like Cuba and Tunisia.”
Tags: Arctic, Carbon, Copernicus, Cuba, Emitted, Europe, GHG, Monitoring, Wildfires
BBC (June 22)
Temperatures in the Arctic Circle “hit an all-time record on Saturday, reaching a scorching 38C (100F) in Verkhoyansk, a Siberian town.” In contrast, the average high is just 20 degrees. “Recent months have seen abnormally high temperatures” in the Arctic, which “is believed to be warming twice as fast as the global average.”
Tags: Abnormal, Arctic, Record, Scorching, Siberia, Temperatures, Verkhoyansk, Warming
LA Times (October 6)
“The Arctic is transforming more rapidly than anywhere else on Earth, with temperatures rising at twice the rate seen elsewhere.… Nobody can be certain when the Arctic sea ice will be gone, but scientists agree that we are on a precarious downward spiral. The loss of nearly all Arctic sea ice in late summer seems inevitable, and an ice-free Arctic Ocean will probably arrive within decades, if not sooner.”
Tags: Arctic, Downward spiral, Earth, Ice-free, Inevitable, Sea ice, Summer, Temperatures
The Economist (September 21)
“We have found that, whether it is in Democratic politics or Russian dreams of opening an Arctic sea passage, climate now touches on everything we write about…. Because the processes that force climate change are built into the foundations of the world economy and of geopolitics, measures to check climate change have to be similarly wide-ranging and all-encompassing. To decarbonise an economy is not a simple subtraction; it requires a near-complete overhaul.”
Tags: Arctic, Climate change, Decarbonise, Democrat, Foundations, Geopolitics, Overhaul, Russia, Sea passage, World economy
Chicago Tribune (January 30)
“This is at least the third polar vortex intrusion Chicago has endured in the past five years, as the cold air mass engulfed the area in January 2014 and February 2015. As temperatures in the Arctic continue to rise, polar vortex intrusions could become more common in the Midwest and the Northeast.”
Tags: 2014, 2015, 2018, Arctic, Chicago, Cold, Endure, Midwest, Northeast, Polar vortex, Temperatures
The Economist (April 29)
“Those who doubt the power of human beings to change Earth’s climate should look to the Arctic, and shiver…. In the past 30 years, the minimum coverage of summer ice has fallen by half; its volume has fallen by three-quarters. On current trends, the Arctic ocean will be largely ice-free in summer by 2040.”
US News & World Report (December 28)
“It was about 37 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the Arctic in November than it usually is this time of year. The week before Christmas, it was 50 degrees above the usual average. That is, to put it mildly, something quite out of the ordinary.” Even more troubling, “what every scientist in the world studying the Arctic knows is this: what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic; and global warming is now permanently altering the region in ways that will have untold consequences. In fact, the Arctic system has changed so dramatically that it may now be vulnerable to tipping points that affect the entire planet.”
Tags: Arctic, Christmas, Consequences, Global warming, Planet, Tipping points, Troubling, Vulnerable
New York Times (July 22)
“Given the rapid changes in that region, the fishing ban hasn’t come too soon.” With the Arctic melt proceeding faster than many imagined, the U.S., Canada, Russia, Norway and Denmark have proactively “put a ‘No Fishing’ sign on the high seas portion of the central Arctic until full scientific studies have been conducted.”
Tags: Arctic, Ban, Canada, Changes, Denmark, Fishing, High seas, Norway, Russia, Scientific studies, U.S.
