The Arctic Is Going Down

The Arctic fails its annual health check as global warming brings more ills to the region

Rachel Ramirez, December 14, 2021 (CNN)

“…[T]he Arctic region showed clear symptoms of an ailing planet over the past year…[The Arctic Report Card found this vast and significant biome is changing profoundly. It continues to warm twice as fast as the rest of the Earth and is rapidly losing ice cover, transforming from a reliably-frozen landscape to a greener and browner one than it was just around a decade ago…[There is] an increase in commercial activities and ships that are venturing further into the Arctic on sea routes opened up by melting ice...[bringing] more garbage and noise to the region, changing its soundscape and interfering with the ability of marine mammals to communicate…

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Retreating glaciers and melting permafrost also threaten lives, economies and infrastructure…As the Greenland ice sheet thaws, that loss of ice causes sea levels to rise, which can be strongly felt in places far from the Arctic, including low-lying Pacific Islands and coastal cities…[T]he Arctic's thawing permafrost is also releasing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, further exacerbating the warming of the entire planet…An August heatwave triggered rain to fall at the summit of Greenland instead of snow for the first time on record...

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This last year adds to another stretch of exceptionally high tundra greenness since the report began; however, recent extreme events and other local influences such melting permafrost thaw or wildfires are also priming the landscape to become browner…” click here for more

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