The Artic it warmed about four times more than the rest of the world in the last 40 yearsconcluded a study, which showed the estimates below the reality of the climatic models of the poles.
The study, published in the journal Earth and Environment Communicationsof the group natureclearly reassessed high the rate of warming of the region around the North Pole.
In 2019, the United Nations Climate Panel (IPCC) estimated that the Arctic was warming.more than twice the world average“, under the effect of a specific process in the region.
This phenomenon, calledarctic amplification“, occurs when ice and snow, which naturally reflect the sun’s heat, melt into seawater, which absorbs more solar heat and warms up.
If scientists have long agreed on the accelerated warming of the Arctic, their estimates of the phenomenon differ in the period they choose to study or the definition, more or less external, of the geographic area of the Arctic.
In the new study, the researchers, based in Norway and Finland, looked at four series of temperature data collected across the Arctic Circle by satellites since 1979, the year after which satellite data became available.
They concluded that the Arctic warmed an average of 0.75 degrees Celsius (ºC) per decade, that is, about four times faster than the rest of the planet.
Due to greenhouse gases managed by human activities, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, the average global temperature of the planet has already risen by around 1.2 °C since the pre-industrial era.
“The scientific literature considers that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, so I am surprised that our conclusion is much higher than the usual number,” said Antti Lipponen, a member of the Finnish Institute of Meteorology. . co-author of the study, to AFP.
But the study detected important local variations in the warming of the Arctic Circle. For example, the Eurasian sector of the Arctic Ocean, near the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard and the Russian archipelago of Nova Zembla, has warmed 1.25ºC per decade, that is, seven times more than the rest of the world.
The team found that most modern climate models predicted Arctic warming by about a third less than their own data show.
This distance, in his opinion, could be explained by the obsolescence of previous models of the arctic climate, in constant improvement.
“The next step would be to maybe take a look at these models, see why they didn’t predict what we found in the observations, and what impact that will have on future climate projections,” Lipponen said.
The intense warming of the Arctic, in addition to a serious impact on local populations and fauna, which depend on the continuation of sea ice for hunting, will also have global repercussions.
“Climate change is man-made, and as the Arctic warms, its glaciers will melt, which will have a global impact on sea levels,” Lipponen said. “What happens in the Arctic affects us allhe said uneasily.
The melting of the ice cap is the main driver of sea level rise, ahead of the melting of glaciers and the expansion of the oceans due to warming water. The melting of the ice pack, which is submerged, does not raise the sea level.
According to the IPCC, sea levels have risen 20 centimeters since 1900. Now, the rate of this rise has almost tripled since 1990 and, depending on scenarios, the oceans could still rise between 40 and 85 centimeters by the end of the century.
The Greenland ice sheet, which could approach the melting point of no return according to recent studies, contains an amount of water ice capable of raising the average sea level by up to six meters.
Source: Observadora
