Department of Defense will likely need to restructure its defense profile in the Arctic when there is no longer an ice cap for much of the year, Schofield said. Some national security implications could occur as a result of the warming as well, as ice melts and opens up previously blocked landmasses, Moerman added. "There's a lot of effort by countries to really try to claim as much territory as they can right now, because there's likely going to be a huge host of economic incentives to go to this new area and harvest what you can," Schofield said. "These cold air outbreaks are really severe," Moerman said.Įkaterina Anisimova/AFP via Getty Images, FILEīut access has the potential to become a "hotbed for new conflict" as nations fight for control over the newly emerged routes, Moerman said. Rather than a steady stream of winds, the jet stream has become more "wavy," allowing very warm temperatures to extend usually far into the Arctic and very cold temperatures further south than usual, Moon said. In the continental U.S., the jet stream forms where generally colder and drier Arctic air meets warmer and more humid air from the Gulf.īut as temperatures in the Arctic warm, the jet stream, which is fueled by the temperature differences, weakens, Moerman said. The jet stream, a band of strong winds moving west to east created by cold air meeting warmer air, helps to regulate weather around the globe. "What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic," Moerman said. The North and South poles act as the "freezers of the global system," helping to circulate ocean waters around the planet in a way that helps to maintain the climates felt on land, Moon said. The environmental conditions in the Arctic affect weather systems across the world. MORE: Polar bears are inbreeding due to melting sea ice, posing risk to survival of the species, scientists say Global weather systems will shift drastically Although the contribution from the Greenland ice sheet is less than a millimeter per year of rising sea level, those small increments add up to between 6 inches to a foot since the Industrial Revolution - sea levels that infrastructure near oceans was not built to withstand, Schofield said.Ī bit "counterintuitively," the loss from the Greenland ice sheet will have its greatest impact on places far away from the Arctic, in low latitudes such as South America due to changes in the global ocean currents, Twila Moon, an Arctic scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center and one of the authors of the Arctic Report Card, told ABC News. Melting from he Arctic - and the Greenland ice sheet in particular - is the largest contributor to sea level rise in the world. The biggest long-term effect of warming in the Arctic will be sea level rise, Oscar Schofield, a professor of biological oceanography at Rutgers University, told ABC News. It may seem like it's far away, but the impacts come knocking on our front door."Ĭoastal communities will eventually need to move inland "We should be paying careful attention to what is happening in the Arctic. "The Arctic is the frontline for climate change," climate scientist Jessica Moerman, vice president of science and policy at the Evangelical Environmental Network, a faith-based environmental group, told ABC News. Widely considered by polar scientists as Earth's refrigerator due to its role in regulating global temperatures, the mass melting of sea ice, permafrost and ice caps in the Arctic is hard evidence of global warming, according to experts. The phenomenon, known as Arctic amplification, occurs when the sea ice, which is white, thins or disappears, allowing dark ocean or land surfaces to absorb more heat from the sun and release that energy back into the atmosphere. The Arctic, is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the world, according to this year's Arctic Report Card, released last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. If there is any doubt about climate change, look no further than the coldest regions of the planet for proof that the planet is warming at unprecedented rates, experts say.
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