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The Arctic shifts to a new climate pattern in which 'normal' becomes obsolete
Warming continues to shrink the snow and ice cover that defines the Arctic, signaling the region's shift to a new climate pattern, scientists said yesterday.
The area covered by sea ice hovered near its historic low this summer. In Greenland, record-high temperatures this year have helped accelerate the melting of the country's massive ice sheet. Throughout the Arctic, permafrost is warming and the blanket of snow is shrinking.
Those changes appear to be long-lasting, said an international team of climate experts who wrote the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report.
Its blunt headline? "Return to previous Arctic conditions is unlikely."
"The Arctic is a system, and the system is changing," said Don Perovich, a sea ice expert with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who worked on the report. "It's not just that sea ice is being reduced. There's changes in Greenland, the atmosphere, the ecosystem, and these changes are affecting human activity."