It’s unusually warm in The Last Frontier.
Large swaths of Alaska have seen record or near-record warmth this March said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy. And the trend isn’t quitting. …
Category: Arctic
The Bering Strait should be covered in ice, but it’s nearly all gone
During winter, the Bering Strait has historically been blanketed in ice. But this year, the ice has nearly vanished.
“The usually ice-covered Bering Strait is almost completely open water,” Zack Labe, a climate scientist and Ph.D. candidate at the Un…
The Arctic we once knew is gone
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Atop the globe, there’s probably no turning back.
Melting trends in the Arctic today are increasingly stark. The 2018 Arctic Report Card, produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), depicts a thawing world that is continuing to warm and melt at an unprecedented pace.
“I think that the report demonstrated everything we’ve been seeing for the last decade,” Jeremy Mathis, a NOAA Arctic scientist who was not involved with this report, said in an interview.
“The changes in the Arctic are happening faster than they’re happening anywhere else on the rest of the planet.”
Loss of November #Arctic sea ice volume since 1979…
+ Data information: https://t.co/MJsb1hjtBx
+ Additional graphics: https://t.co/uzWknWmNnX pic.twitter.com/TKk1MIrba9— Zack Labe (@ZLabe) December 8, 2018 Read more…
More about Arctic, Global Warming, Climate Change, Noaa, and Arctic Warming
View More The Arctic we once knew is goneAn appreciation of the persistently grim tweets from the Norway Ice Service
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Monday through Friday of each week, the Norwegian Ice Service, a government agency within the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, tweets out rather dismal news about the state of the thawing Arctic.
But these tweets aren’t intended to be grim. They’re simply an objective account of the modern Arctic reality. Each morning, the agency puts the current sea ice cover over a large swath of ocean between Norway and the North Pole into an emotionless, historical perspective.
Take, for instance, a post from August 22, 2018:
This is the lowest area for this day of the year in our records dating back to 1967.
— Norway Ice Service (@Istjenesten) August 22, 2018 Read more…
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View More An appreciation of the persistently grim tweets from the Norway Ice ServiceExtreme Arctic heat wave in 2016 wouldn’t have happened without climate change
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Just days before Christmas in 2016, the North Pole was 50 degrees above its usual winter temperature. The top of the world was just above freezing.
Unusually warm air had smothered the Arctic throughout that year, and now a recently published report, led by government scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), found that it’s nearly impossible to explain the intensity of this warmth simply by normal fluctuations in weather.
A heating event like this isn’t natural, they argue — it’s largely human-induced, specifically by the greenhouse gases emitted by human industry and trapped in the atmosphere. Read more…
More about Science, Arctic, Sea Ice, Climate Change, and Heat Waves
View More Extreme Arctic heat wave in 2016 wouldn’t have happened without climate changeThree giant submarines emerging from beneath the Arctic ice is pretty awesome
In Ice Exercise 2018, U.S. Navy and UK Royal Navy submarines got their readiness to operate in frigid environments tested by breaking through the North Pole ice. Read more…More about Mashable Video, Arctic, Arctic Sea Ice, Exercise, and Ice
View More Three giant submarines emerging from beneath the Arctic ice is pretty awesomeLong-lived bowhead whales found singing over 180 different songs
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Bowhead whales are mysterious, Arctic-dwelling creatures. Scientists believe they can live for over two centuries, and even so, they largely avoid getting cancer. In the 1990s, an old stone spearhead — a weapon that hadn’t been used since the 1800’s — was found embedded in a bowhead whale’s blubber. That whale had apparently survived a hunter’s attack, over a century earlier.
Now, marine researchers say they’ve recorded bowheads singing an unprecedented number of songs. The marine mammals seem to be altering their songs each year, similar to how a jazz musician is constantly improvising.
“If humpback whale song is like classical music, bowheads are jazz,” Kate Stafford, an oceanographer at the University of Washington, said in a press release. Read more…
More about Climate, Science, Arctic, Whales, and Mystery
More ambitious pollution cuts could save Arctic sea ice and the species that depend on it
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The loss of Arctic sea ice is one of the clearest signs of human-caused climate change, and there’s been nothing but blinking red alarms coming from the top of the world lately. The past four winters have seen such anemic sea ice growth that they’ve been the lowest four maximum sea ice extents since 1979.
At the same time, the region’s climate has seen temperatures increase at more than twice the rate of the rest of the world, with record-shattering seasons becoming more common.
During the summer, you can now take a luxury cruise ship through the Northwest Passage, and even in the winter, ice is failing to show up in places where it’s normally so thick that it groans. Read more…
More about Climate, Science, Arctic, Global Warming, and Arctic Sea Ice
View More More ambitious pollution cuts could save Arctic sea ice and the species that depend on itDrastic Arctic warm event stuns scientists, as record-breaking temperatures reach the North Pole
Arctic scientists are poring over data coming in from the vast, normally frozen region, after the North Pole’s version of a heat wave swept across the area for the past week. Not only was the region near the North Pole the warmest it has been during …
View More Drastic Arctic warm event stuns scientists, as record-breaking temperatures reach the North PoleTemperature rises above freezing near North Pole, as frigid air slinks toward Europe
The temperature at a weather station at the very top of Greenland, at one of the closest points of any land mass to the North Pole, has risen above the freezing mark of 32 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0 degrees Celsius, during the past two days.
This…
How climate change is shrinking the largest Arctic land mammal
A scientific study suggests that muskoxen are having smaller and weaker offspring due to warmer winters. Read more…More about Mashable Video, Arctic, Global Warming, Climate Change, and Real Time
View More How climate change is shrinking the largest Arctic land mammalHow climate change is shrinking the largest Arctic land mammal
A scientific study suggests that muskoxen are having smaller and weaker offspring due to warmer winters. Read more…More about Mashable Video, Arctic, Global Warming, Climate Change, and Real Time
View More How climate change is shrinking the largest Arctic land mammal