Unstoppable?

 

Of all the regions reeling from global warming, few equal the Barents Sea.

The Barents is a shallow sea, the territorial waters of both Norway and Russia. It is rich in both fish stocks and fossil fuels.  While the Arctic is no stranger to warming, the Barents is the miner's canary.

New figures show annual average temperatures in the area are rising across the year by up to 2.7C a decade, with particularly high rises in the months of autumn of up to 4C a decade. This makes the North Barents Sea and its islands the fastest warming place known on Earth.

Recent years have seen temperatures far above average recorded in the Arctic, with seasoned observers describing the situation as “crazy”, “weird”, and “simply shocking”. Some climate scientists have warned the unprecedented events could signal faster and more abrupt climate breakdown.

It was already known that the climate crisis was driving heating across the Arctic three times faster than the global average, but the new research shows the situation is even more extreme in places.

The heating of the Barents is expected to form a feedback loop that will trigger faster change across the Arctic and impact the climate of North America, Europe and Asia.