A year of ‘unreal’ fire and warming in the Arctic

This summer was the warmest on record in the Arctic, as it occurred at lower latitudes. But above the Arctic Circle, temperatures are rising four times faster than elsewhere.

According to the 18th century, last year was globally the sixth warmest year the Arctic had experienced since reliable measurements began in 1900. annual assessment of the regionpublished Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic,” said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and editor of the new report, called the Arctic Report Card.

The assessment defines the Arctic as all areas between 60 and 90 degrees north latitude. Greenland’s melting ice sheet is one of the biggest contributors to global sea level rise, and scientists are exploring links between Arctic weather and extreme weather further south.

The hottest spots on the Arctic map varied throughout the year. At the start of the year, temperatures over the Barents Sea north of Finland and eastern Russia were as much as 5 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average. In spring, temperatures were also about 5 degrees Celsius warmer than average in northwestern Canada.

Higher air temperatures dry out vegetation and soil, which turns on the pump to make it easier for wildfires to ignite. This year, during Canada’s worst-ever wildfire season, fires burned more than 4 million hectares in the Northwest Territories. More than two-thirds of the area’s population of 46,000 people had to be evacuated at various points and smoke from the fires reached millions more people, reducing air quality as far away as the southern United States.

“The fires were unreal,” said Tero Mustonen, an environmental researcher in Finland and contributor to the report. “This year is the year things really change,” he added. “The North is now in a place where things are going to change quickly.”

High temperatures also melt snow and ice, important parts of the Arctic landscape for both wildlife and people. Greenland’s ice sheet lost even more mass than it gained through precipitation, continuing a trend that began in 1998. In the Arctic Ocean, the extent of floating sea ice was the sixth lowest ever in the satellite record, which began in 1979.

This year, for the first time, the Arctic Report Card includes weather and climate observations from the Alaska Arctic Observatory and Knowledge Hub, a network of Iñupiat observers living on the coast of Alaska. The observers reported that several powerful storms hit their communities last year. A lack of sea ice exposed the coastline – including roads, buildings, community icehouses and historic monuments – to increased damage from flooding and erosion.

“I think we have lost more soil to the ocean than ever before,” Bobby Schaeffer, an observer, wrote in a message to the network in September 2022, after three powerful storms in three months hit near his village of Kotzebue struck.

In October, after one such storm, Billy Adams, an observer in Utqiagvik, wrote in a message to the network that it was a reminder of “the true power of nature.” “We hope to be much better prepared as we need to take notes and learn from this,” he wrote.

The inclusion of the knowledge center in the report reflects the growing collaboration between Western scientists and indigenous peoples with first-hand knowledge of the changing conditions in the Arctic.

“We see, we experience, we live with the changes every day,” said Roberta Glenn-Borade, the project coordinator and community liaison for the resource center, which is based at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “But we’re still here.”

The NOAA report highlighted the fact that as rising temperatures put pressure on traditional ways of life, locals around the Arctic are trying to take their fate into their own hands.

In Finland, Dr. Mustonen founded an organization called the Snowchange Cooperative, through which the Finnish and Sámi communities in rural areas have recovered their lives. more than 86,000 hectares of peatland.

Dr. Mustonen sees the restoration of natural ecosystems as a way to not only undo past environmental damage, but also to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Peatlands absorb and store large amounts of carbon dioxide, and if restored areas are large enough, they can support hundreds of bird species. The restoration work itself, he said, is helping to give hope to northern communities.

“What can we do now that the Arctic and the Arctic are undergoing this massive shift? And where should we direct our meager resources within a short period of time?” asked Dr. Mustonen before answering his own questions. “Peatlands are one of the best things you can do in a short period of time because we need to keep that carbon on the ground in a way that also makes the villages stronger.”

A topic of discussion at this year’s United Nations Climate Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was international financing for the developing countries most affected by climate change. There is a risk that the Arctic will be left out of the conversation, says Susan Natali, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and also leader of the Permafrost Pathways initiative. Indigenous communities in the Arctic tend to be located in wealthier countries but don’t necessarily receive the climate-related funding they need from those federal governments, she said.

“These changes that are happening are more than the graphs and numbers we see,” says Dr. Natali, who was not involved in the Arctic Report Card. “They have a very serious impact on people’s health and on people’s ability to travel and on their ability to access livelihoods and indigenous ways of life.”

“There are millions of people living in the Arctic,” she added. “They have been affected by these changes for decades.”