The Arctic is being transformed rapidly by human-caused climate changes. Arctic residents now have to deal with more typical effects of other regions like wildfires, typhoons and increased rainfall.
These were the findings from the Annual Arctic Report Card produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Richard Spinrad, NOAA Administrator, stated that the changes can be seen in decreased sea ice, plankton blossoms, mass seabird deaths, coastal erosion, and damage to Arctic communities.
Spinard stated, “It is a fact that rapid Arctic warming is affecting more than 400,000 Indigenous people and, in some cases, is upending their whole way of living.”
The Arctic Report Card now includes a section on Indigenous peoples for the first year. Jackie Schaeffer is the climate initiatives director at Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. She is also one of the authors.
She stated that Native people now see the same kind of changes in their lives as they did over many generations. Schaeffer, originally from Kotzebue said that the fact that her people have survived is an encouraging sign.
She said, “That I could still fill up my freezers with the food my ancestors ate for 20,000 years is encouraging.” “I want that science and my partnership are there so that we can have the same hope for the next 500 years.”
The Arctic is heating twice as fast than the rest of the globe. The Arctic report card provides a number of indicators. The Arctic’s surface temperatures have been the sixth-warmest since 1900 in the last year. According to the report card authors, the past seven years have been the warmest since 1900.
