NOAA Scientists Issue Alarming “Arctic Report Card”

NOAA reports:



A typhoon, smoke from wildfires and increasing rain are not what most imagine when thinking of the Arctic. Yet these are some of the climate-driven events included in NOAA’s 2022 Arctic Report Card, which provides a detailed picture of how warming is reshaping the once reliably frozen, snow-covered region which is heating up faster than any other part of the world.

Arctic annual air temperatures from October 2021 to September 2022 were the sixth warmest dating back to 1900, continuing a decades-long trend in which Arctic air temperatures have warmed faster than the global average. The Arctic’s seven warmest years since 1900 have been the last seven years.

The Greenland ice sheet lost ice in 2022, the 25th consecutive year of ice loss. In September 2022, the Greenland ice sheet had unprecedented late-season warming, creating surface melt conditions over 36% of the ice sheet on September 3, including the Greenland ice sheet’s summit at 10,500 feet.

Much of the Arctic continued to show increased ocean plankton blooms in 2022, as has occurred over the 2003-2022 satellite observation period. Summer storms in 2022 in the Bering Sea may have been responsible for higher-than-average plankton blooms due to increased vertical mixing of nutrients from deep ocean waters to the surface.