The Arctic has had its hottest summer in history this year, due to human-caused climate changes as per The National Oceanic and atmospheric Administration’s most recent Arctic Report Card.
“Its urgency is greater than it ever has been before,” declared Rick Spinrad, NOAA administrator. “The right time to act has arrived.”
This year’s 18th Arctic Report Card included significant changes in Arctic terrain, weather and climate due to warming. Arctic sea ice extent was sixth lowest recorded. More than a million acres of permafrost undersea is in danger of melting and releasing more greenhouse gases and heavy rainfall set record records throughout the Arctic and causing natural catastrophes.
“Climate change isn’t something that’s going to come from the future. It’s not coming in the near future. It’s happening right in the present,” said Daniel Schindler Ecologist from the University of Washington. “Whether you’re talking about fish, birds or humans There are real consequences that we have to confront at this moment.”
The administration and its collaborators organized a press event on the report’s findings in the annual American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco on Tuesday.
The report of this year was based on Indigenous perspectives, with the contributions of a network composed of coast Alaska observators who range from Kotzebue through Kaktovik. The observers provided reports of the loss of sea ice, warming oceans, and more intense storms that can cause erosion and flooding.
“These environmental changes will have significant effects on the community’s infrastructure as well as traditional activities, accessibility and access to subsistence resources,” Roberta Glenn-Borade said who is the coordinator of the network known by its name, The Alaska Arctic Observatory and Knowledge Hub.
Glenn-Borade Glenn-Borade, who hails from Utqiagvik Glenn-Borade, from Utqiagvik, said that despite difficulties, she sees a lot of the region as resilient.
“There’s the strength of feeling proud that we’ve been able to get this far and to continue to thrive in our area and live on the sea and land. We don’t see ourselves going back anytime in the near future,” she said.
Annually, the report card analyzes the biological and physical changes that have occurred within the Arctic. Researchers from all over the circumpolar north have described the warmer, more wet and less frozen Arctic that is more vulnerable towards extreme events in the climate such as the wildfires this summer in Canada and the flooding that occurred in Juneau.
A section about Alaska salmon also showed the way climate change impacts species in different ways. Western Alaska chum and chinook salmon have been in steady decline for a long time, and have fallen to the lowest levels of returns in history which is likely the result of warmer rivers and oceans. However, sockeye salmon have reached record levels in recent years.
“These figures were not predictable or would have been plausible a decade back,” said Schindler, the ecologist.
Schindler believes that the success of sockeye may be due to warming waters that help to increase the population of plankton sockeyes eat.
Researchers believe that tracking the shifts in Arctic is vital because they are an early indication about how the climate changes could impact all over the world as the temperature rises.
