Climate Change Report: Arctic “Lurching to New Environment” With Dire Global Implications

ELLESMERE ISLAND, CANADA - MARCH 29: A section of an ice field is seen from NASA's Operation IceBridge research aircraft on March 29, 2017 above Ellesmere Island, Canada. The ice fields of Ellesmere Island are retreating due to warming temperatures. NASA's Operation IceBridge has been studying how polar ice has evolved over the past nine years and is currently flying a set of eight-hour research flights over ice sheets and the Arctic Ocean to monitor Arctic ice loss aboard a retrofitted 1966 Lockheed P-3 aircraft. According to NASA scientists and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), sea ice in the Arctic appears to have reached its lowest maximum wintertime extent ever recorded on March 7. Scientists have said the Arctic has been one of the regions hardest hit by climate change. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Yet another ominous new report on climate change shows rapid melting of Arctic ice and permafrost will have consequences felt far beyond Earth’s northern region.

“The findings are contained in the 2019 Arctic Report Card, a major federal assessment of climate change trends and impacts throughout the region,” the Washington Post reports. It describes “a region lurching to an entirely new and unfamiliar environment.”

And that description is frightening. As PBS puts it:

“Dead seals, marked with bald patches, washing onto shores or floating in rivers. A 900-mile-long bloom of algae stretching off the coast of Greenland, potentially suffocating wildlife. A giant, underground storehouse of carbon trapped in permafrost is leaking millions of tons of greenhouse gases [carbon dioxide and methane] into the atmosphere, heralding a feedback loop that will accelerate climate change in unpredictable ways.”

The Report Card was released on Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

For the first time, this year’s report includes observations by members of eight of the more than 70 indigenous communities on the front lines of the Arctic transformation.

I've been writing about climate change and the Arctic since 2014. Sometimes I feel like I'm running out of the words to explain just how bad things are. https://t.co/A7sy90L5CH
— Sabrina Shankman (@shankman) December 10, 2019

“In the northern Bering Sea, sea ice used to be present with us for eight months a year,” they write. “Today, we may only see three or four months with ice.”

“This disappearing sea ice not only serves as a natural bridge for Native people hunting for food, but is central to creating the food in the first place,” PBS says. “Its loss appears to be tied to dramatic shifts in marine life, as the sea ice helps create cold patches of water where Arctic fish thrive.”

The report further concludes that “the Arctic already may have become a net emitter of planet-warming carbon emissions due to thawing permafrost, which would only accelerate global warming,” says the Post, adding that:

“There has been concern throughout the scientific community that the approximately 1,460 billion to 1,600 billion metric tons of organic carbon stored in frozen Arctic soils, almost twice the amount of greenhouse gases as what is contained in the atmosphere, could be released as the permafrost melts.”

The report warns that the Arctic region, warming at more than double the rate of the rest of the world, may be accelerating global warming, thus affecting even those living half a world away.

“Each of the studies has some parts of the story. Together they really paint the picture of — we’ve turned this corner for Arctic carbon,” researcher Ted Schuur told the Post. “Together they complement each other … and really in my mind are a smoking gun for this change already taking place.”

NOAA posted “visual highlights” of the Report Card on YouTube: