This year has been awful -- whether it was the COVID-19 pandemic, the Australian bushfires or the loss of our beloved movie stars, it has left no stone unturned to be regarded as the worst year humanity has ever experienced.?
And this year we also saw another occurrence that we thought we might never see -- temperatures in the freezing regions of the Arctic go higher than the temperature in Mumbai.
On June 20, 2020, the small town of Verkhoyansk in Siberia recorded the hottest temperature it has ever experienced at 38 degrees celsius. This is a region where temperatures normally go below freezing. Just to put things into perspective, Mumbai on that very day had 33 degrees celsius. But another thing to understand is that Mumbai is a tropical region, closer to the sea level whereas Sibera is up higher, near the Arctic circle.?
And these heatwaves made lives hell for people, resulting in wildfires. Since the first week of August, 600 individual wildfires were spotted every day and some parts of Siberia have been burning since June. What's worse is that these temperatures weren¡¯t supposed to happen for at least until thirty years.?
According to Christopher J White, a senior lecturer in Water and Environmental Engineering at the University of Strathclyde, in an article in the Conversation, ¡°Climate model projections show that the kind of extreme summer temperatures we¡¯ve seen in the Arctic in 2020 weren¡¯t likely to occur until the mid-21st century, exceeding predictions by decades.¡±
White states that this unexplained boost in temperature is causing ¡®feedback loops¡¯ that are resulting in an increase in concentrations of greenhouse gases through occurrences like wildfires which just accelerates the damage caused by this climate change,
He explains, ¡°Record CO2 emissions released from burning Arctic forests during the summer of 2020 will make future conditions even warmer. But ash and other particulates from the wildfires will eventually settle on the ice and snow, making them darker and accelerating their melting by reducing how easily their surface reflects sunlight.¡±
He concluded stating how current climate models predict a future where hot and fire-prone areas are becoming more violent, and 2020s record-breaking temperatures give us a glimpse of the grim future we¡¯re going to step into.