Arctic warming is happening significantly faster than previously thought, study finds
Things are heating up at the top of the world about four times faster than the rest of the globe, according to new research on the Arctic, where some of the
Things are heating up at the top of the world about four times faster than the rest of the globe, according to new research on the Arctic, where some of the most dramatic effects of climate change are already playing out.
Previous studies — which have evaluated data over longer time periods — had estimated that the Arctic region is warming twice as fast as the global average, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. But scientists at the Finnish Meteorological Institute now say that since 1979 the Arctic is actually warming at a significantly faster rate than that.
In some spots, the researchers found that warming has been even more pronounced in recent decades. The area around the Barents Sea, for instance, has warmed seven times faster than the global average, they said.
"Our results demonstrate that climate models as a group tend to underestimate the observed Arctic amplification in the 1979–2021 time period," the scientists wrote in the study, which was published Thursday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.
Climate researchers often use the situation in the Arctic as a bellwether for the impacts of global warming because the region is particularly sensitive to even small shifts in global surface temperatures. As a result, changes there typically play out more rapidly compared to elsewhere on Earth. What happens in the Arctic also has enormous implications for the rest of the globe, since melting ice sheets contribute to rising sea levels.
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