This is the 33rd issuance of the annual assessment now known as State of the Climate, published in the Bulletin since 1996. As a supplement to the Bulletin, its foremost function is to document the status and trajectory of many components of the climate system. However, as a series, the …
Sharp and potentially devastating temperature rises of 3C to 5C in the Arctic are now inevitable even if the world succeeds in cutting greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris agreement, research has found. Winter temperatures at the north pole are likely to rise by at least 3C above …
The Arctic Ocean could become ice-free in the summer in the next 20 years due to a natural, long-term warming phase in the tropical Pacific that adds to human-caused warming, according to a new study. Computer models predict climate change will cause the Arctic to be nearly free of sea …
As Arctic shipping increases, pressure is mounting to protect the environment from fuels that are harmful when burned and spilled, including heavy fuel oil (HFO). Presently, the IMO is working to develop a ban on HFO in Arctic waters. This paper presents five Arctic shipping case studies, focusing on ships …
Soils in tropical and temperate locations are known to be a sink for the genetic potential of anthropogenic-driven acquired antibiotic resistance (AR). In contrast, accumulation of acquired AR is less probable in most Polar soils, providing a platform for characterizing background resistance and establishing a benchmark for assessing AR spread. …
Permafrost warming has the potential to amplify global climate change, because when frozen sediments thaw it unlocks soil organic carbon. Yet to date, no globally consistent assessment of permafrost temperature change has been compiled. Here we use a global data set of permafrost temperature time series from the Global Terrestrial …
The loss of Arctic permafrost deposits by coastal erosion could amplify climate warming via the greenhouse effect. A study using sediment samples from the Sea of Okhotsk on the eastern coast of Russia led by AWI researchers revealed that the loss of Arctic permafrost at the end of the last …
Rising global temperatures caused by human activity are making the heatwaves gripping the northern hemisphere more likely, scientists warn. Extreme heat has been seen in the northern hemisphere, with temperatures exceeding 30 degrees in the Arctic circle, a deadly heatwave in Japan being declared a natural disaster and heatwaves in …
Considering the swarming biodiversity at the equator, and the lack of diversity near the poles, scientists have long assumed that species evolve more rapidly in warm waters. But a new study of the evolutionary development of 30,000 fish species has turned that idea on its head. Biologists found that a …
Using reanalysis datasets and numerical simulations, the relationship between the stratospheric Arctic vortex (SAV) and the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) on decadal time scales was investigated. A significant in-phase relationship between the PDO and SAV on decadal time scales during 1950–2014 is found, that is, the North Pacific sea surface …
Albedo—a primary control on surface melt—varies considerably across the Greenland Ice Sheet yet the specific surface types that comprise its dark zone remain unquantified. Here we use UAV imagery to attribute seven distinct surface types to observed albedo along a 25 km transect dissecting the western, ablating sector of the …
The Warm Arctic–cold Siberia surface temperature pattern during recent boreal winter is suggested to be triggered by the ongoing decrease of Arctic autumn sea ice concentration and has been observed together with an increase in mid-latitude extreme events and a meridionalization of tropospheric circulation. However, the exact mechanism behind this …
The devastating impact of climate change in the polar regions has been confirmed by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) annual Arctic Report Card Authors from the American scientific agency concluded that 2017 was not a record-breaking year in terms of climate extremes, there was still evidence that …
Climate change means ice, where polar bears are most at home, is melting earlier in the year and so polar bears have to spend longer on land, scientists say. A boatload of tourists in the far eastern Russian Arctic thought they were seeing clumps of ice on the shore, before …
The existence and magnitude of the recently suggested global warming hiatus, or slowdown, have been strongly debated. Although various physical processes have been examined to elucidate this phenomenon, the accuracy and completeness of observational data that comprise global average surface air temperature (SAT) datasets is a concern9,10. In particular, these …
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Arctic sea ice may be thinning faster than predicted because salty snow on the surface of the ice skews the accuracy of satellite measurements, a new study from the University of Calgary said on Tuesday. The report from the Canadian university’s Cryosphere Climate Research Group published …
Warming soils are releasing more carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought, suggesting a potentially disastrous feedback mechanism whereby increases in global temperatures will trigger massive new carbon releases in a cycle that may be impossible to break. The increased production of carbon comes from the microbes within soils, according …
Typically 20–40 extreme cyclone events (sometimes called 'weather bombs') occur in the Arctic North Atlantic per winter season, with an increasing trend of 6 events/decade over 1979–2015, according to 6 hourly station data from Ny-Ålesund. This increased frequency of extreme cyclones is consistent with observed significant winter warming, indicating that …
According to local scientists and specialists in Denmark, the population of the dogs – traditionally used for transporting people and goods across Greenland’s vast snowy landscape and also for sled racing – has fallen by more than 50 per cent over the past 20 years Professor Morten Meldgaard of the …
The Arctic is warming faster than any other part of the world, and its ecosystems are changing quickly, with shifts in the timing of insect hatches, plant growth and more. Those changes are impacting migratory species that move between the Arctic, the tropics and temperate zones. One such species is …
An international, peer-reviewed publication released each summer, the State of the Climate is the authoritative annual summary of the global climate published as a supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The report, compiled by NOAA’s Center for Weather and Climate at the National Centers for Environmental Information …
