Climate Change Has Destabilized Both Poles (and everything in between them).


It was the year when a small Siberian town far within the Arctic Circle registered 100 F. Change is coming fast to both Arctic and Antarctic, change that already alters the jet streams and much of the climate in temperate latitudes (i.e. us).

“The very character of these places is changing,” said Twila Moon, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center and co-editor of the Arctic Report Card, an annual assessment of the state of the top of the world. “We are seeing conditions unlike those ever seen before.”

“The Arctic is a way to look into the future,” said Matthew Druckenmiller, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center and another co-editor of the Arctic Report Card. “Small changes in temperature can have huge effects in a region that is dominated by ice.”

This year’s edition of the report card, which was presented at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting Tuesday, describes a landscape that is transforming so fast scientists struggle to keep up. The period between October and December 2020 was the warmest on record. This summer saw the second-lowest extent of thick, old sea ice since tracking began in 1985.

Separately, the World Meteorological Organization confirmed a new temperature record for the Arctic: 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the Siberian town of Verkhoyansk on June 20, 2020.

New studies show the Antarctic's massive Thwaites ice shelf could detach much sooner than expected, perhaps in as little as three years.
  
The disintegration of the Thwaites ice shelf won’t immediately increase sea levels — that ice already floats on top of the water, taking up the same amount of space whether it’s solid or liquid. But without the ice shelf acting as a brace, the land-bound parts of the glacier will start to flow more quickly. Thwaites could become vulnerable to ice cliff collapse, a process in which towering walls of ice that directly overlook the ocean start to crumble.

Looking to the past to meet the future.

For many Arctic residents, climate change is a threat multiplier — worsening the dangers of whatever other crises come their way. Another essay in the Arctic Report Card documents the threats to Alaska Natives’ food security caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Quarantine restrictions prevented people from traveling to their traditional harvesting grounds. Economic upheaval and supply chain issues left many grocery stores with empty shelves.

But the essay, which was co-written by Inupiaq, Haida, Ahtna and Supiaq researchers, along with experts from other Native communities, also highlights how Indigenous cultural practices helped communities stave off hunger. Existing food sharing networks redoubled their efforts. Harvesting practices were adapted with public health in mind.

To Moon, this study in resilience holds lessons for the rest of the world.

“We’ve built a society that has assumed many hard boundaries, whether they be political boundaries, expectations of certain foods to grow in certain place, or that buildings can exist in the same spot for hundreds of years,” she said. “Now global change is challenging that assumption.”

More on the Thwaites Glacier here.

Photo: A Siberian horse herder from the Verkhoyansk region may be nearing the end of his trail.



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