Climate Change

With its vast expanses of ice-covered land and sea, the Arctic is extremely vulnerable to observed and projected climate change and its impacts. Over recent decades, regional temperatures have risen at twice the rate of the rest of the world, causing the Arctic to undergo some of the most rapid transformations on the planet. The most notable effects include an unprecedented loss of sea ice, accelerated melting of glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet, and thawing of the permafrost layer that underlies high-latitude land as well as the sub-sea continental shelf. At the same time, ocean currents and winds appear to be shifting.

Less visible changes are taking place as Arctic Ocean waters warm. The sea is turning more acidic from increasing levels of carbon dioxide, and scientists have detected the potent greenhouse gas, methane, seeping out from enormous seafloor deposits of methane hydrate, a “frozen” form of the gas