Washington Post - Sarah Kaplan
New research shows how rising temperatures have irreversibly altered both
the Arctic and Antarctic. Ripple effects will be felt around the globe.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released 2021’s
Arctic report card on Dec. 14. (NOAA) 4min 17sec
The ice shelf was cracking up. Surveys showed warm ocean water eroding its
underbelly. Satellite imagery revealed long, parallel fissures in the frozen
expanse, like scratches from some clawed monster. One fracture grew so big, so
fast, scientists took to calling it “the dagger.”
“It was hugely surprising to see things changing that fast,” said Erin Pettit.
The Oregon State University glaciologist had chosen this spot for her Antarctic
field research precisely because of its stability. While other parts of the
infamous Thwaites Glacier crumbled, this wedge of floating ice acted as a brace,
slowing the melt. It was supposed to be boring, durable, safe.
Now climate change has turned the ice shelf into a threat — to Pettit’s field
work, and to the world.
Planet-warming pollution from burning fossil fuels and other human activities
has already raised global temperatures more than 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees
Fahrenheit). But the effects are particularly profound at the poles, where
rising temperatures have seriously undermined regions once locked in ice.
In research presented this week at the world’s biggest earth science conference,
Pettit showed that the Thwaites ice shelf could collapse
within the next three to five years, unleashing a river of ice that could dramatically raise sea levels. Aerial
surveys document how warmer conditions have allowed beavers to invade the Arctic
tundra, flooding the landscape with their dams.
Large commercial
ships are increasingly infiltrating formerly frozen areas, disturbing wildlife
and generating disastrous amounts of trash. In many Alaska Native communities,
climate impacts compounded the hardships of the
coronavirus
pandemic, leading to food shortages among people who have lived off this land
for thousands of years.
“The very character of these places is changing,” said Twila Moon, a
glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center and co-editor of the
Arctic Report Card, an annual assessment of the state of the top of the world.
“We are seeing conditions unlike those ever seen before.”
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Rain falls beyond the historical Zion’s Church on Sept. 4 in
Ilulissat, Greenland. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
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The rapid transformation of the Arctic and Antarctic creates ripple effects all
over the planet. Sea levels will rise, weather patterns will shift and
ecosystems will be altered. Unless humanity acts swiftly to curb emissions,
scientists say, the same forces that have destabilized the poles will wreak
havoc on the rest of the globe.
“The Arctic is a way to look into the future,” said Matthew Druckenmiller, a
scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center and another co-editor of the
Arctic Report Card. “Small changes in temperature can have huge effects in a
region that is dominated by ice.”
“The Arctic is a way to look into the future.”
Matthew
Druckenmiller, scientist and Arctic Report Card co-editor
This year’s edition of the report card, which was presented at the American
Geophysical Union annual meeting Tuesday, describes a landscape that is
transforming so fast scientists struggle to keep up. Temperatures in the Arctic
are rising twice as fast as the global average. The period between October and
December 2020 was the warmest on record, scientists say.
Separately on Tuesday, the World Meteorological Organization
confirmed a new temperature record for the Arctic: 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the Siberian
town of Verkhoyansk on June 20, 2020.
These warm conditions are catastrophic for the sea ice that usually spans across
the North Pole. This past summer saw the second-lowest extent of thick, old sea
ice since tracking began in 1985. Large mammals like polar bears go hungry
without this crucial platform from which to hunt. Marine life ranging from tiny
plankton to giant whales are at risk.
“It’s an ecosystem collapse situation,” said Kaare Sikuaq Erickson, whose
business
Ikaagun Engagement
facilitates cooperation between scientists and Alaska Native communities.
The consequences of this loss will be felt far beyond the Arctic. Sea ice has
traditionally acted as Earth’s “air conditioner”; it reflects as much as two
thirds of the light that hits it, sending huge amounts of solar radiation back
into space.
By contrast, dark expanses of water absorb heat, and it is difficult for these
areas to refreeze. Less sea ice means more open ocean, more heat absorption and
more climate change.
“We have a narrow window of time to avoid very costly, deadly and irreversible
climate impacts,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration head Rick
Spinrad told reporters Tuesday.
Record highs have also sounded the death knell for ice on land. Three historic
melting episodes struck Greenland in July and August, causing the island’s
massive ice sheet to lose about 77 trillion pounds. On Aug. 14, for the first
time in recorded history, rain fell at the ice sheet summit.
“I think my jaw would have hit the floor,” Moon said, imagining what she might
have felt had she witnessed the unprecedented event. “This fundamentally changes
the character of that ice sheet surface.”
Though the Greenland ice sheet is more than a mile thick at its center, rain can
darken the surface, causing the ice to absorb more of the sun’s heat, Moon said.
It changes the way snow behaves and slicks the top of the ice.
The consequences for people living in the Arctic can be dire. In Greenland and
elsewhere, meltwater from shrinking glaciers has deluged rivers and contributed
to floods. Retreating ice exposes unstable cliffs that can easily collapse into
the ocean, triggering deadly tsunamis. Roads buckle, water systems fail and
buildings cave in as the permafrost beneath them thaws.
Some 5 million people living in the Arctic’s permafrost regions are at risk from
the changes happening at their shores and under their feet.
“It’s not just about polar bears, it’s about actual humans,” said Rick Thoman, a
climate specialist at the International Arctic Research Center at the University
of Alaska Fairbanks and another co-editor of the Arctic Report Card. “These
changes are impacting people and their lives and livelihoods from ‘What’s for
dinner tonight?’ up to the international scale.”
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Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier in 2019.
(Jeremy Harbeck/OIB/NASA)
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In Antarctica, said University of Colorado at Boulder glaciologist Ted Scampos,
“climate change is more about wind changes and ocean changes than warming —
although that is happening in many parts of it as well.”
Though the continent stays frozen for much of the year, rising temperatures in
the Pacific have changed how air circulates around the South Pole, which in turn
affects ocean currents. Warm, deep ocean water is welling up toward coastlines,
lapping at the ice sheet’s frozen underbelly, weakening it from below.
“This is triggering the beginnings of a massive collapse,” Scampos wrote in an
email from Antarctica’s McMurdo Station, where he is preparing for a field trip
to the Thwaites Glacier’s failing ice shelf.
The disintegration of the Thwaites ice shelf won’t immediately increase sea
levels — that ice already floats on top of the water, taking up the same amount
of space whether it’s solid or liquid. But without the ice shelf acting as a
brace, the land-bound parts of the glacier will start to flow more quickly.
Thwaites could become vulnerable to ice cliff collapse, a process in which
towering walls of ice that directly overlook the ocean start to crumble.
If the entire glacier failed, it would raise sea levels by several feet. Island
nations and coastal communities would be inundated.
“We don’t know exactly if or when ice cliff failure is going to initiate,” said
Anna Crawford, a glaciologist at the University of St. Andrews who works on
models of the process. “But we’re certain Antarctica is going to change.”
“There’s ample evidence to support reducing emissions,” she added, “because it’s
giving us enough to be worried about already.”
For some in the Arctic, this rapid thaw represents opportunity. Tundra
vegetation flourishes in the warmer weather. Beavers have migrated northward,
digging their paws into the once-frozen earth.
Satellite images show that the number of beaver ponds in western Alaska — formed
when the large rodents build their dams along waterways — has at least doubled
since 2000. These ponds can contribute to the rapid thaw of permafrost,
unleashing carbon that has been locked in soil for thousands of years. But it’s
not yet clear what beaver engineering means for the planet, or even for the
ecosystems just downstream.
Warmer conditions have also allowed people to infiltrate new environments, and
here the detrimental impacts are plain to see. New shipping routes have been
established through areas once blocked by sea ice, disrupting wildlife and
polluting the ocean with unnatural noise.
Passing ships also leave behind huge amounts of garbage; in summer 2020,
hundreds of items washed ashore in Alaskan communities along the Bering Strait.
Residents — most of them Alaska Natives — found clothes, equipment, plastic food
packaging and cans of hazardous oils and insecticides in waters where they
regularly fish. Labels in English, Russian, Korean and a host of other languages
illustrated the international nature of the problem.
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Ice and snow on the shoreline at Teshekpuk Lake in North Slope
Borough, Alaska, on May 28, 2019. The lake is the largest in Arctic
Alaska and is a significant location for geese to molt and for
caribou to migrate and calf.
(Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
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For many Arctic residents, climate change is a threat multiplier — worsening the
dangers of whatever other crises come their way. Another essay in the Arctic
Report Card documents the threats to Alaska Natives’ food security caused by the
coronavirus pandemic. Quarantine restrictions prevented people from traveling to
their traditional harvesting grounds. Economic upheaval and supply chain issues
left many grocery stores with empty shelves.
But the essay, which was co-written by Inupiaq, Hadia, Ahtna and Supiaq
researchers, along with experts from other Native communities, also highlights
how Indigenous cultural practices helped communities stave off hunger. Existing
food sharing networks redoubled their efforts. Harvesting traditions were
adapted with public health in mind.
“Our people, we’ve had to have these underlying characteristics of resiliency,
sharing, respect,” said Erickson, the Inupiaq researcher. “We focus on practical
solutions, otherwise we won’t survive.”
“The rest of the world,” he added, “is going to have to face that as well.”
Though no place on Earth is changing as fast as the Arctic, rising temperatures
have already brought similar chaos to more temperate climes as well.
Unpredictable weather, unstable landscapes and collapsing ecosystems are
becoming facts of life in communities around the globe.
None of this represents a “new normal,” Moon cautioned. It’s merely a pit stop
on a path to an even stranger and more dangerous future.
Global greenhouse gas emissions are on track to keep rising. Governments and
businesses have not taken the steps needed to avert catastrophic warming beyond
1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. There
is every reason to believe that instability at the poles — and around the planet
— will get worse.
But achieving the best case climate scenarios
could cut the volume of ice lost from Greenland
by 75 percent, research suggests. International cooperation could prevent
garbage from getting into the oceans and alleviate the effects of marine noise.
Better surveillance and early warning systems can keep people safe when melting
triggers landslides and floods.
“There’s such a big range and difference in what the future of the Arctic and
the future anywhere on our globe can look like,” Moon said. “It all depends on
human actions.”
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