The arctic summer of 2020 is one that has been marked by fires in the far north, with smoke stretching more than 1,000 miles upwind, along with alarming new temperature records and melting ice. While rapid climate change in the Arctic is not exactly news (the region is warming about three times more than the rest of the world), manifestations of this phenomenon are increasing in severity, scope, and social consequences.
© European Union, images of Copernicus Sentinel-2 processed by Annamaria Luongo / European Union, Copernicus …
Surface melt water (blue) in part of the Svalbard ice cap, seen through the Sentinel-2 satellite on July 27, 2020. (Images from the European Union, Copernicus Sentinel-2 processed by Annamaria Luongo)
This week, for example, with flames rampaging through Siberia, smoke smothered the skies to parts of Alaska. In Svalbard, a Norwegian arctic archipelago that has seen staggering warming rates in recent years, all-time temperature records were set, turning retreating glaciers into slurry, covered in so much turquoise water that was visible from space.
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The Svalbard Archipelago is one of the fastest warming places on Earth, with sea ice and declining glaciers. In Longyearbyen, Svalbard, the northernmost inhabited settlement, with more than 1,000 residents, temperatures rose to 71.1 degrees (21.7 degrees Celsius) on July 25, setting a record for this location. Longyearbyen had a four-day chain that exceeded 68 degrees (20 degrees Celsius), a feat seen only once before, in 1979.
At the same location, the low overnight temperature did not drop below 62.2 degrees (16.8 degrees Celsius) on the 25th, setting a record for the warmest low temperature.
Average high and low temperatures at this time of year in Longyearbyen are 49 (9.4 Celsius) and 41 degrees (5 Celsius)
The Svalbard ice sheet has the highest loss of surface mass of any Arctic ice sheet so far this summer and hit a record for surface snow and ice melt on July 25 when temperatures rose, Xavier Fettweis said , scientist at the University of Liège. Belgium.
Meltwater seen in the Svalbard ice sheet, comparing images from July 27, 2019 with July 27, 2020. (Images from the European Union, Copernicus Sentinel-2 processed by Annamaria Luongo)
Arctic Forest Fire Emissions Set Records
While Siberia’s extreme temperatures, including a probable all-time Arctic temperature record of 100.4 degrees (38 degrees Celsius) recorded in June at Verkhoyansk, which lies above the Arctic Circle, has received the most attention, they are the forest fires there that are having major effects beyond this region These fires have continued at their unrelenting rate since June.
Every day, the smoke, which contains greenhouse gases that heat the planet, has been poured into the air, while on the ground the flames have been destabilizing the permafrost by burning the protective vegetation on the permanently frozen ground. This also adds to climate change, as it releases carbon and methane.
Comparison of images of glaciers in Svalbard, Norway, on July 27, 2019 versus July 27, 2020. (Images from the European Union, Copernicus Sentinel-2 processed by Annamaria Luongo)
On many days during July, a milky glow of smoke thick enough to darken the ground was visible in satellite imagery stretching across an expanse that would cover much of the lower 48 states. The most severe fires have been accompanied by huge plumes of smoke, known as pyrocumulonimbus clouds or pyroCbs.
Carbon emissions from Arctic forest fires, driven mainly by Siberian fires, reached a record level in July, according to the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, a European Union scientific agency based in Reading, England. Such data dates back 18 years, with an increase in Arctic fire emissions seen during that period.
© NASA / NASA
On July 27, 2020, smoke snakes pass through Siberia, into the northwest Pacific Ocean. Some smoke also flows into the Arctic sea ice. (NASA worldview)
Between July 1 and July 23, July’s total estimated carbon emissions from fires in the Siberian Arctic amount to 100 metric megatons of carbon dioxide, said Mark Parrington, a senior scientist with the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service , via email. Parrington said this is above the 59 metric megatons of carbon dioxide emitted by the Arctic Circle fires in June.
“The large cluster of fires within the Siberian Arctic Circle has been burning with high intensity (higher than the highest daily total calculated for the region in 2019) for several days and appears to be continuing,” Parrington said last Friday, a prediction that has turned out to be true.
Through Twitter on Wednesday, Parrington said: “July 2020 has witnessed an escalation in arctic fires never before seen” in data collected by Copernicus’s Atmospheric Monitoring Service. Parrington said the satellite’s estimated forest fire carbon emissions are running at twice the amount seen during the previous record-breaking Arctic fire season, which was last year.
Smoke from these fires, including ash and carbon monoxide, spread through the Chukchi Sea to Alaska.
Siberia has experienced record warmth for the calendar year thus far. Siberian fires, and in particular prolonged heat, have already been directly related to man-made climate change.
In a quick analysis, the researchers found that the prolonged heat from January to June in northern Siberia was produced at least 600 times more likely by human-caused climate change. This led them to conclude that such an event would be almost impossible in the absence of global warming.
In addition, other parts of the Arctic are recovering from the effects related to climate change, along with transient climatic features.
Meanwhile, extreme temperatures in the Scandinavian Arctic and Siberia have also spread to northern Canada. On July 25, a temperature of 71.4 degrees was recorded in Eureka, Nunavut, located in the Canadian Arctic at 80 degrees north latitude. According to Mika Rantanen, a researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, that may be the highest temperature recorded so far in the north.
In an example of how extreme weather events can interact with long-term trends related to climate change, a strong area of low pressure emerged earlier this week in the Beaufort Sea, northern Alaska, which could accelerate melting sea ice. The low is reminiscent of a powerful storm that churned up the sea ice cap during the 2012 summer melt season. That storm helped accelerate ice loss, leading to an all-time record ice extent.
Despite being of similar intensity, the recent storm is unlikely to have the same effects on the melting season’s trajectory, sea ice experts say. While noting that the extent of sea ice is in record territory, the storm hit a region filled with the thickest ice in the Arctic. Most of the ice loss this summer occurred on the Eurasian side of the Arctic, including northern Siberia, where the Northern Sea Route likely opened on its earliest recorded date, a full month earlier than average.
“The key really is the timing of the storm and the thickness of the ice that is there,” Julienne Stroeve, chief scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado, said in an email.
There is a possibility that the storm will accelerate the melting of the ice, but it depends on several factors.
“Since storms tend to cause ice divergence, if the storm pushes some of the ice into Beaufort [Sea] toward [the] The Bering Strait is likely to melt, as the ocean temperatures there are up to 5 degrees Celsius higher than average, “said Stroeve.
Walt Meier, a colleague from Stroeve’s NSIDC, noted that the 2012 storm hit later in the melting season and in “a region where the ice sheet was already broken and quite scattered (low concentration). So there were many opportunities for the storm to lift waves and actually decimate the ice. This year, the ice in that region is, at least for the moment, more formidable. It is more compact and probably thicker. Therefore, this year’s storm may not having the same impact as in 2012. We’ll see. ”
The bottom line
Almost uniformly, scientists studying Arctic warming emphasize how quickly changes are taking place across the vast region. A study published Wednesday in Nature Climate Change supports that impression, showing that “large portions” of the region have been heating at a rate of 1.8 degrees (1 Celsius) per decade for 40 years, constituting an “abrupt event of climate change “when viewed in light of paleoclimatic records of abrupt glacial episodes in the past.
The study found that even the bleakest climate model scenarios tend to underestimate the recent pace and extent of climate change in the Arctic. Co-author Martin Stendel, a research scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute, wrote via Twitter message that “[a]Additional abrupt changes can only be avoided by following a low emission scenario. ”
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