The Arctic has finished its warmest winter on record. Scientists blame climate change for the Arctic’s warmest winter on record and sea ice hitting historic lows for this time of year.
New US weather data shows, sea ice hit record lows for this time of year, with plenty of open water where ocean water normally freezes into thick sheets of ice.
“It’s just crazy, crazy stuff,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, who has been studying the Arctic since 1982. “These heat waves, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Before this year, scientists had seen the temperature there rise above freezing in February only twice before, and only ever so briefly.
Last month’s record-hot temperatures at Cape Morris Jesup have been more like those in May, said Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute.”The extended warmth really has kind of staggered all of us”.
But it’s more than that one place. Across the Arctic Circle in Barrow, Alaska, February was 10C warmer than normal and the entire winter averaged 7.8C above normal.
Of nearly three dozen different Arctic weather stations, 15 of them were at least 5.6C above normal for the winter, according to data from climatologist Brian Brettschneider of the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Meteorologists consider December, January and February to be winter, and Arctic weather stations averaged 4.9C warmer than normal for the season that just ended.
In February, Arctic sea ice covered 5.4 million square miles 13.9 million square kilometeres ,about 160,000 square kilometres smaller than last year’s record low, the ice data centre said Tuesday.
In the winter, sea ice “acts as a lid to keep the warmth of the water at bay” but when there is less sea ice, more heat goes into the air, Brettschneider said.
Scientists say what’s happening is unprecedented, part of a global warming-driven cycle that likely plays a role in strong, icy storms in Europe and the US northeast.
>Juthy Saha
