Arctic: temperatures are rising far too quickly!

The Amap (Arctiq Monitoring and Assessment Program) indicates, in its latest report dated Thursday, May 20, 2021, that the Arctic is warming three times faster than the planet.

Certainly, the news from the Arctic and the Antarctic is never very encouraging. Almost a week without a study demonstrating, with supporting scientific evidence, the manifestations of global warming in these regions of the world.

The rise in temperatures is having an increasingly strong impact on the sea ice. It melts. It melts quickly and the various scientific studies carried out by researchers combining historicity, records of current information and projections suggest that its melting will accelerate. In almost 50 years, the Amap report explains that the annual average temperature in the Arctic has increased at a rate three times higher than the global average. Between 1971 and 2019, this temperature reached 3.1 ° C when that of the rest of the world rose by 1 ° C. Even more worrying, the new simulations of the phase 6 coupled model intercomparison project have shown that the Annual average temperatures in the Arctic will increase by 2100 from 3.3 ° C to 10 ° C above the 1985 to 2014 average. At this rate, the sea ice may well melt entirely in the summer period before 2050 between October and May. A few months ago, professor of climatology Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen already pointed out that: “The changes occur so quickly during the summer months that the sea ice is likely to disappear faster during the summer months than most models. climate never predicted ”

As a reminder: “the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) is a project of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP). This project aims to carry out climate simulations in a coordinated way between the different research groups, allowing a better estimation and understanding of the differences between the climate models. It also makes it possible to estimate the uncertainty due to the imperfection of the models in the estimation of climate change linked to man. "(1)

It is therefore not surprising that we regularly report in our articles that the surface area of the sea ice continues to decrease, leading to phenomena as impressive as they are worrying such as the release of huge blocks of ice.

The objective of the Paris Agreement to keep the rise in global temperatures below 2 ° C is more essential than ever. Cold periods of more than 15 days have already almost completely disappeared from the Arctic since 2000. In theory, the ice floes reform in winter but researchers have expressed their fears that this will become more and more compromised. Indeed, they estimate that the risks of the pack ice disappearing before its reformation would be 10 times higher if the global temperature increases by 2 ° C compared to a scenario of 1.5 ° C, which is the objective of the Paris agreement. .

The countries that will meet in Glasgow for Cop 26 next November will have to make strong commitments and, this time, keep them. All the scientific studies carried out agree, no offense to climate skeptics. Winters in this part of the world are getting hotter and hotter. The flora and fauna are suffering as well as the local populations. The increasing number of fires each year rage in Siberia and the surrounding areas. Nothing in the current state of things will come to reverse the trend.

The level of seriousness of the consequences in the years to come will, in any case, be closely correlated with the level of greenhouse gas emissions that human activity will produce. It is therefore up to us to take our responsibilities.

(1) - Source - Wikipedia.