10/4/2023 0 Comments New york times now![]() Ocean temperatures are rising, too, hitting a high in 2019 as well, and increasing faster than previously estimated. The second warmest year on record was 2019, and it closed out the hottest recorded decade. When it comes to climate, there’s a lot that we know. These salinity changes may eventually have an effect on some of the large ocean currents that help determine long-term climate trends in parts of the world.Īs climate researchers are fond of saying, what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic. As Greenland’s ice sheet melts, the fresh water it releases lowers the saltiness of the nearby ocean. But some scientists now say they think Arctic warming is causing the jet stream to wobble in ways that lead to more extreme weather year round, by creating zones of high-pressure air that can cause weather systems - the ones that bring extreme heat, for example - to stall.Īrctic warming may also be affecting climate over the longer term. Cold snaps like these have occurred for a long time although, because of global warming, studies have found that they are not as cold as they used to be. Weakening of the high-altitude winds known as the polar jet stream can bring extra-frigid winter weather to North America and Europe. In the Arctic, currents and winds flow out of the region and affect weather elsewhere. (That’s not to say that the continent isn’t losing ice: it is, mostly through calving of icebergs and melting of the undersides of ice shelves.) Some of the ice that covers the continent is melting, but no dark ocean is being exposed. Is this happening at the South Pole as well? No, because while the Arctic is mostly water surrounded by land, Antarctica is the opposite, a huge land mass surrounded by ocean. It’s a vicious cycle that contributes to rapid warming in the region. Ocean, on the other hand, absorbs more than 90 percent.Īs the Arctic warms more of the ice disappears, leaving more dark ocean to absorb more sunlight and radiate even more heat, causing even more loss of ice. The ice absorbs only about 30 to 40 percent of the sunlight hitting it the rest is reflected. The Central Arctic is all ocean - dark water that is covered, to a varying extent, by light ice. Just as a black car gets much hotter than a white car on a sunny day, darker parts of the planet absorb more sunlight, and in turn radiate more heat, than lighter parts. But the source of that heat is sunlight striking the Earth, and the amount of heat radiated differs depending on the surface the sunlight hits. In large part, the Arctic is warming the way the rest of the world warms, only up north the process has run amok.Īs the concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases increase in the atmosphere, so does the amount of heat they trap. (Last year, average air temperatures were about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1.9 degrees Celsius, higher than the average from 1981-2010.) Since the mid-1990s, the Arctic has been warming faster than any other region of the planet: currently, at least two and a half times as fast. It’s a good place to understand the science of climate change, and, it turns out, a critically important one to understand its effects. So let’s take a closer look at one piece: what’s happening at the top of the world, the Arctic. ![]() As a science writer at The Times for more than 20 years, I’ve learned that, to avoid being overwhelmed, it helps to start by understanding one part of the larger problem. The coronavirus pandemic can seem overwhelming because of its sheer scope so can climate change. As I wrote in December, impacts that scientists predicted years ago - including severe storms, heat waves and the melting of glaciers and ice sheets - are accelerating. The only real debates are over how fast and how far the climate will change, and what society should do - the global-warming equivalents of lockdowns and social distancing - to slow or stop it and limit the damage.Īs of now, the damage seems to be getting worse. Global warming is happening, and its effects are being felt around the world. ![]() Amid the horror and uncertainty of a global health crisis it can be easy to forget that another worldwide disaster is unfolding, although much more slowly.
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