Warming is transforming the Arctic, says NOAA’s Arctic Report Card

The Arctic remains the place to see some of the most dramatic impacts of climate change, according to the annual report card on the region released on Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“The Arctic marine ecosystem and the communities that depend upon it continue to experience unprecedented changes as a result of warming air temperatures, declining sea ice, and warming waters,” NOAA said on Dec. 10 in its Arctic Report Card.

For 2019, NOAA found:

• The average annual land surface air temperature north of 60 degrees for October 2018 to August 2019 was the second warmest since 1900, while the annually averaged temperatures from 2013 to 2019 exceeded all previous records since 1900.

• The Greenland ice sheet is losing nearly 267 billion metric tonnes of ice per year and contributing, worldwide, to average sea-level rise at a rate of about 0.7 mm per year. In 2019, 95 per cent of the ice sheet went through some kind of melting in the summer. “The exceptionally early and widespread melt in 2019 is likely to have led to the biggest one-year ice mass loss on record for the Greenland ice sheet,” said NOAA.

• Arctic wildlife populations are showing signs of stress. The breeding population of the ivory gull in the Canadian Arctic has declined by 70 per cent since the 1980s, and the levels of contaminants in the eggs, blood and feathers of the ivory gull are “among the highest ever reported in Arctic seabirds.”

• Winter sea ice extent in 2019 “narrowly missed” surpassing the record low set in 2018. In 2019, there is less ice cover and more younger ice that’s especially vulnerable to melting.

• Tundra greening continues to increase.

“This warming is transforming Arctic ecosystems and presenting unique challenges for the region’s Indigenous peoples who rely on the stability of the environment for cultural and economic well-being, as well as for subsistence foods taken from their local lands and waters,” the report card noted.

NOAA has issued its Arctic Report Card every year since 2006.

This year, its release comes as the United Nations climate talks are underway in Madrid.

You can read the 100-page report card, which includes 12 essays from 81 international researchers, here.