Climate change has wreaked havoc across the world, with weather being highly unpredictable and unstable at many places. The phenomenon has spiked the occurrence of freak weather changes and natural calamities, and now, we are in fact, way past the looming threat of climate change and are in the phase called climate emergency.?The Arctic region is feeling the effects of this drastic fluctuation more than any other place on Earth. In fact, the Arctic is heating up three times faster than other parts of the planet.
Here are some of the strange things that are happening at the North Pole and it¡¯s more than just worrying:
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In the past few years, extreme temperature and rapid fluctuation in temperature has had a severe impact on the flora and fauna of the region. The Arctic region, has quite literally, been turning brown because of this. Large swathes of land can be seen covered in brown vegetation. Scientists say that ¡®the worrying shift in colour could significantly hinder the region¡¯s ability to adapt to climate change.¡¯
¡®Extreme climatic events can significantly reduce the ability of Arctic ecosystems to take up carbon,¡¯ lead researcher Rachael Treharne, an Arctic ecologist at England¡¯s University of Sheffield, writes in The Conversation. This has implications for whether the Arctic will help combat climate change, or accelerate it.
Sea ice levels over great swathes of the sprawling Arctic ocean have hit a historic low. The most striking declines are in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, located above Alaska. The melt is exceptional, but right in line with accelerating melting trends occurring as the Arctic warms. The Arctic was once blanketed with older, thicker ice. But now the ice is younger, thinner, and easily melted.
The Arctic ice cover, an expanse of frozen seawater floating on top of the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas, thickens and expands during the fall and winter month, a NASA report states. It thins and shrinks during the spring and summer until it reaches its annual minimum extent in September. Rising temperatures in the Arctic over the past decades has thinned the sea ice crust to an alarming extent.
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Seals and whales in the Arctic are shifting their feeding patterns as climate change is continually altering their habitats. According to an AFP report, researchers harnessed datasets spanning two decades to examine how two species of Arctic wildlife - beluga whales (also known as white whales) and ringed seals - are adapting to their changing homes. Seals are stuck with their old diet, but appear to spend more time searching for the food at the glacier fronts. The study showed both species spent around half their time foraging at glacier fronts and eating a diet dominated by polar cod, states the report.
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The heatwave in the Arctic Circle has led to record temperatures in areas of Alaska, Canada and Greenland. In 2019 alone, more than 60 large fires have ravaged Alaska. Brian Brettschneider, a climate scientist with the International Arctic Research Center explains, that global warming has been thawing tundra and drying vast stretches of the far-northern boreal forests.
This has caused wild thunderstorms with lightning, which are the main reason behind the fires burning in Alaska. 'Unprecedented' number of wild fires are currently raging in the Arctic Circle with over 100 burning in the last few weeks in the Sakha Republic of Siberia and Alaska. Rapid thawing could release vast quantities of heat-trapping gases and further add to the rise in temperature.
Last month, the picture of an emaciated Polar Bear caught wandering and foraging for food in garbage in industrial town of Norilsk in northern Siberia, made global headlines. The?exhausted polar bear strayed hundreds of kilometres from its natural Arctic habitat and wandered into the city.
Local environmentalists say this is the first polar bear seen in the city in about 40 years. According to the Siberian Times, the bear is believed to have crossed the Taymyr Peninsula to reach the industrial city of Norilsk. Polar bears depend on Arctic ice for hunting.
Even the sea ice is shrinking rapidly in recent decades, threatening the very existence of polar bears. As a result, bears are left hungry ¨C especially during summer months when there is little for them to eat.
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, 2019 has the seventh-lowest sea ice cover in the Arctic since they began collecting data 40 years ago.
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Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted. According to a Reuters report, scientists were left baffled after hot summers had destabilised the upper layers of giant subterranean ice blocks that had been frozen solid for more than a millennia.
Scientists are concerned about the stability of permafrost because of the risk that rapid thawing could release vast quantities of heat-trapping gases, unleashing a feedback loop that would in turn fuel even faster temperature rises, states the report.
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In June this year, temperatures hit a record high of 69.8 deg F (21 deg C) in the northernmost permanently inhabited spot on the planet less than 966 km from the North Pole.?Canada¡¯s weather agency told AFP that temperatures in Alert, Nunavut, peaked at 21C at the weekend ¨C far exceeding the July average for the area of around 5C.
The current heatwave is due to a high pressure front over Greenland, which is ¡°quite exceptional¡± and feeds southerly winds on the Arctic Ocean, said Castellan, states an AFP report.
According to a Greenpeace report, for?people and animals that live in the Arctic¡¯s unique environment climate change is not a debate; it¡¯s a daily reality.
The?Arctic helps to regulate the world¡¯s temperature, so the faster the Arctic ice melts the warmer our world becomes.