On Tuesday the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revealed that the warming Arctic has set another record. By September of this year, the average air temperature over Arctic land reached 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit — the highest it has ever been since observations began in 1900.
According to CBS News, these observation come from the annual Arctic Report Card, which keeps track of not only temperature increases but other climate change phenomena as well.
For example, the Report Card also contained a record concerning sea ice, which appears when the Arctic Ocean water freezes. Higher temperatures mean less sea ice, so it’s not surprise that the Report Card indicates that, by September, the minimum ice coverage was the fourth lowest on record.
This year’s maximum sea ice coverage was similarly abysmal. By February, sea ice in the Arctic Sea peaked for 2015, although “peaked” is a relative term here — it was the lowest recorded maximum since the records began in 1979.
The vanishing of sea ice stands to threaten the livelihood of a number of animals which utilize the ice for mating and birthing. With the rapidly declining prevalence of sea ice, walruses are forced to stand together on land, where because of the lack of ice and therefore of usable space, crowding leads to stampedes, which threaten even more walrus lives.
Jennifer Kay, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado mentioned her lack of surprise concerning the rapidly declining sea ice situation in an interview with CBS News last spring. “The record-low Arctic ice extent this winter is not surprising to me from a scientific standpoint.”
“Warming is happening more than twice as fast in the Arctic than anywhere else in the world,” NOAA chief scientist Rick Spinrad said at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, according to the report. “We know this is due to climate change.”