Latest report says Arctic region hit record-high temperatures
Xinhua News Agency, Washington, Dec. 13 (Reporters) - The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a latest report on the 13th saying that due to human carbon emissions and the effects of El Nino, the Arctic region warmed over the past year at twice the rate of the rest of the Earth, setting a record-high temperature; the area of ice and snow cover in the Arctic region is also continuously shrinking.
This peer-reviewed report, titled the "2016 Arctic Report Card," is funded by the U.S. federal government and has been released once a year since 2006. This year's report was jointly completed by 61 scientists from around the world.
"We rarely see the Arctic display such a clear, strong and more pronounced signal of sustained warming and its associated effects on the environment as we did this year," commented Jeremy Mathis, the report's lead author and director of the Arctic research program at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The report said the Arctic temperature from October 2015 to September 2016 was "the highest value since observational records began in 1900"; its average was 2°C higher than the 1981-2010 average and 3.5°C higher than the region's average temperature in 1900. In addition, during this period, the Arctic Ocean temperature was 5°C higher than the average sea water temperature along the coast of Greenland over the past 30 years.
The Arctic warming trend is also reflected in ice and snow cover area. The report pointed out that October to November each year should be the season when Arctic sea ice refreezes, but in 2016 this point in time was clearly delayed. From mid-October to November 2016, the Arctic sea ice area was the lowest in history since satellite records began in 1979, a decrease of 28 percent from the 1981-2010 average. Compared with previous years, the time when Greenland's ice sheet begins melting in spring continued to advance; in 2016 it began on April 10, second only to 2012 in the 37 years of records. At the same time, including northern Alaska in the United States, northern Canada and Greenland, the snow cover area in the Arctic region this spring also set a record low, falling below 1.5 million square miles (about 3.9 million sq km) for the first time since satellite observations began in 1967.
"It is very clear that the record-breaking delay in the fall of 2016 in (Arctic) sea ice freezing is related to unprecedented high temperatures and sea surface temperatures," the scientists said in the report.
Mathis attributed the Arctic warming trend to two causes: first, global climate warming caused by human carbon emissions, and second, the large-scale El Nino phenomenon worldwide.
The report also warned that Arctic warming causes the tundra to release more carbon dioxide, and if the trend of tundra thawing continues, it will "have profound impacts on the weather and climate of the Arctic and other parts of the Earth."