The Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet,
suggests a huge assessment of the region. The warming is hastening the
melting of Arctic ice and boosting sea-level rise
<http://www.nature.com/news/climate-science-rising-tide-1.13749>.
“The take-home message is that the Arctic is unravelling,” says Rafe
Pomerance, who chairs a network of conservation groups called Arctic 21 and
was a deputy assistant secretary of state for environment and development
under US President Bill Clinton. “The fate of the Arctic has to be moved
out of the world of scientific observation and into the world of government
policy.”
Credit: *Nature
<http://www.nature.com/news/huge-arctic-report-ups-estimates-of-sea-level-rise-1.21911>*,
April 28, 2017, doi:10.1038/nature.2017.21911
In one scenario, which assumes that carbon emissions rise slightly above
the goals set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement—but still see a
considerable reduction—sea levels would increase by at least 0.52 metres by
2100, compared with 2006, the Arctic report says. Under a business-as-usual
scenario, the minimum increase would be 0.74 metres.
Although aggressive reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions will make a
crucial difference by the end of the century, dramatic changes are still
likely over the next few decades, says Morten Skovgård Olsen, who
coordinated the assessment and leads the Danish Ministry of Energy,
Utilities and Climate’s Arctic programme.
“The Arctic that you will have by mid-century will be very different from
the Arctic that we see today,” he says.