Arctic Report Card 2023: Wildfires to melting sea ice, warmest summer on record had cascading impacts across Arctic

Arctic Report Card 2023: Wildfires to melting sea ice, warmest summer on record had cascading impacts across Arctic

Subject : Environment

Section: Climate Change

Context:

• The 2023 Arctic Report Card brought together 82 Arctic scientists from around the world to assess the Arctic’s vital signs, the changes underway and their effects on lives across the region and around the world.

Global warming impact on the Arctic:

• Temperatures in the Arctic have been rising more than three times faster than the global average. 2023 was the warmest summer in the Arctic.
• Wildfires forced evacuations across Canada.Greenland was so warm that a research station at the ice sheet summit recorded melting in late June, only its fifth melting event on record.
• Sea surface temperatures in the Barents, Kara, Laptev and Beaufort seas were 9 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit (5 to 7 degrees Celsius) above normal in August.
• The winter snow cover melted early across large parts of northern Canada, providing an extra month for the Sun to heat up the exposed ground.
  • The heat and lack of moisture dried out organic matter on and just below the surface; by November, 70,000 square miles (180,000 square kilometers) had burned across Canada, about a fifth of it in the Northwest Territories.
• Dark open water absorbs the sun’s rays during the summer and, in the autumn, acts as a heating pad, releasing heat back into the atmosphere.
• There is a  shifts in wind patterns and increasingly intense ocean storms.
• Climate change led alterations are damaging the cultural practices and food security of indigenous communities of the Arctic region.
  • Yukon River Chinook have decreased in size by about 6% since the 1970s, and they’re producing fewer offspring. This is impacting the food security of the region.
• Finland is putting an effort to restore damaged reindeer habitat.
  • Degraded peatlands also release greenhouse gases, contributing to climate change. Keeping them healthy helps capture and store carbon away from the atmosphere.

Subsea permafrost:

• It is frozen soil in the ocean floor that is rich in organic matter. It has been gradually thawing since it was submerged after Northern Hemisphere ice sheets retreated thousands of years ago. Today, warmer ocean temperatures are likely accelerating the thawing of this hidden permafrost.
• Just as with permafrost on land, when subsea permafrost thaws, the organic matter it contains decays and releases methane and carbon dioxide – greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming and worsen ocean acidification.

Mackenzie River:

• It is a river in the Canadian boreal forest.
• Source – Great Slave Lake
• Drains into the Beaufort sea in the Arctic Ocean.
• It forms Mackenzie delta near the beaufort sea.
• It forms, along with the Slave, Peace, and Finlay, the longest river system in Canada, and includes the second largest drainage basin of any North American river after the Mississippi.
• Due to rising sea surface temperature, this river is supplying warm water into the Beaufort Sea to the north, thus resulting in more melting of ice.

Source: Down To Earth