The Arctic has warmed much faster than the rest of the world in the past several decades, scientists are claiming. As sea ice melts and wildfires scorch the planet’s northernmost forests, scientists say fossil fuels are the cause for Arctic ice melting.
Arctic amplification is caused by the heat-trapping emissions from burning fossil fuels. The pace of the temperature increase around the North Pole in recent decades was four times higher than the rest of the planet, researchers at the Finnish Meteorological Institute found in a study published on Thursday.
Climate models, which scientists used to predict long-term change, are not capturing this high rate of warming, lead author and researcher Mika Rantanen told CNN. This is disturbing because if the models can’t recreate what’s happening right now, scientists can’t be confident in their long-term predictions.
“Because of this discrepancy, we decided that this needs to be corrected,” Rantenen said. “This needs to be updated.”
The study, published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, assessed and analysed temperature trends in and around the Arctic Circle between 1979 and 2021 — the modern era of satellite data. The scientists found that the rate of warming is particularly high in the Eurasian region of the Arctic, especially the Barents Sea. This area has warmed seven times faster than the global average.
Recent data showed that the annual average temperature in the Barents region rose by as much as 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit) each decade in the past 20 to 40 years. This makes the Barents Sea and its islands the fastest warming areas on Earth.
Speaking to CNN, John Walsh, chief scientist at the International Arctic Research Center in the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said the study’s timeframe really homed in on the Arctic amplification phenomenon, which has been more significant in the past several decades than the early and mid-1900s.
“The Arctic amplification is unmistakable,” Walsh, who is not involved with the study, said. “It’s more than a factor of one; it’s a factor of several — whether it’s two or three or four — and I think that doesn’t change the fact that the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the world.”
All these findings also mirror the most recent UN state-of-the-science report on the climate-change crisis. The report found that the Arctic will continue to warm faster than the rest of the planet as long as humanity continue to burn fossil fuels and release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
“The Arctic is really more sensitive to global warming than previously thought,” Rantanen said. “Only time will tell. Let’s see how this will evolve in the future.”