In the Arctic, you will not find anyone denying climate change. From Sitka in Alaska to Svalbard in Norway, people are living in a period of extraordinarily rapid climate change that is affecting their lives.
Alaska has just experienced its warmest December ever. The statewide average temperature anomaly is staggering 15.7 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. In a vast swath of the state, nearly the size of California, Washington, and Oregon, temperatures were 20 degrees Fahrenheit above the December average due to the high pressure area that affected Alaska all month.
Alaska is expected to experience another unusually strong warming in early mid-February, as the giant high-pressure ridge arrives in the state from the North Pacific. A clockwise circulation around this area will cool some parts of Alaska, but warm other areas - especially in the western part of the state.
The lack of cold weather in Alaska, where people, natural systems and the economy need them, has far-reaching consequences, experts say. For example, the creation and maintenance of dense ice and snow cover is important for vehicle travel across a state, 90% of which has no roads. When people from rural areas need to go somewhere, they usually use snowmobiles and cross rivers, which must be safely frozen.
This year the ice froze late, remained thin, and melted easily due to lack of snow cover. This has had tragic consequences, including the deaths of travelers in the past two months.
Alaska's climate, with a typical winter daytime temperature of -34.5 degrees Celsius, helps maintain deep permafrost. The permafrost is now melting and is releasing significant amounts of gases, including carbon dioxide and methane. This accelerates global warming by creating what is called a positive feedback loop.
Days of intense cold are necessary to preserve the permafrost and the growth of certain plant species. As the state's average temperature rises, entire ecosystems are shifting northward.
Promotional video:
Permafrost is the reason why schoolchildren in Alaska go to school in cold weather and stay at home in warm weather. When it warms, melting snow and rain freeze instantly, in contact with permafrost. Snow-covered roads are turning into ice rinks. Fairbanks has never heard of rain in winter before, but in the past few years, including 2018, such weather has been noticed more than once.
One culprit behind the unusually warm December and part of January is record low sea ice levels in the Bering and Chukchi Seas along the southwestern and northern coasts of Alaska.
The absence of sea ice means that the air moved from the southwest, west and northwest towards Alaska was warmer than it would have been otherwise, as the sea ice cover tends to cool the air above it more than the open ocean.
In Utkjavik, which faces the Chukchi Sea in the far north of Alaska, temperatures were above average for a record 87 consecutive days from October 26, 2017 to January 21, 2018.
Warming has affected every part of the state at different times this winter. For example, on January 14, long-term temperature records were updated in southeast Alaska. The rest of the state also experienced above average temperatures.
In Metlakatla, located in the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska, the temperature reached 18 degrees Celsius, the highest temperature ever recorded in the state in January.
This winter is abnormal not only in Alaska, but throughout the Arctic, which is heating up almost twice as fast as the rest of the globe.
Svalbard in Norway, which overlooks the Atlantic side of the Arctic, has averaged 9.3 degrees Celsius above average over the past 30 days. Svalbard's sea ice area has also reached the second lowest level, posing a threat to polar bears and other wildlife that need sea ice to hunt for prey.
The area of Arctic ice in the vast Arctic Ocean has reached an all-time low for this time of year and is likely to set a new anti-record. Studies have shown that the area and rate of loss of Arctic ice has become unprecedented over the past 1,500 years and that these trends are directly related to the increase in the volume of greenhouse gases in the air due to the burning of fossil fuels.
Weather patterns over the next few weeks may continue to hamper ice growth, possibly keeping the ice sheet at an all-time low as unusually warm air repeatedly floods the Arctic from the Pacific side.