AFPSnowy mountains on Spitsbergen
NOS News•yesterday, 11:15 PM•Adjusted yesterday, 11:20 PM
This year’s summer was the warmest on record in the Arctic. That appears from The Arctic Report Card, an annual report on the state of the area compiled by the US government agency National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The average summer temperature in the area was 6.4 degrees.
In addition, the entire year in the Arctic was the sixth warmest on record. There is talk of a warmer, wetter and greener North Pole. The report states that “the Arctic continues to develop rapidly as a result of past and present human activities” that have released and are releasing greenhouse gases.
The increased heat means, among other things, that vegetation and the soil in the area become drier. For example, in northern Canada this year, wildfires burned more than 4 million hectares in the Northwest Territories area.
These and other wildfires also occurred without human intervention, but the report says the size and intensity of the fires have likely changed over time and is “partly due to changing human activity.”
Ice dam breakthrough
Another example of the negative consequences of ongoing climate change mentioned in the report is the breach of an ice dam on a glacial lake near the US city of Juneau, Alaska.
This caused water from the glacial lake to flow into a nearby river. As a result, the river overflowed its banks, destroying several houses. According to the researchers, it is “a direct consequence of the dramatic thinning of glaciers over the past 20 years.”
Polar researcher from the University of Groningen Maarten Loonen is concerned, he tells NOS. “The temperature is much higher than expected for 2023 and also much higher than predicted.” He conducted research in Spitsbergen from mid-June to mid-August. “This year was the first time I didn’t wear gloves for the entire period, it was so hot.”
Rising temperatures in the area have a direct impact on sea level rise due to the melting ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica, Loonen says. “And more and more permafrost (soil that is normally frozen all year round) is thawing. This releases methane gas, which only warms the earth further. He has seen the area change significantly over the past 30 years. “The glaciers that reach the sea hatchlings have become considerably smaller. And for example, the breeding birds now start breeding 10 days earlier.”
Fewer prey animals
The report also contains examples of the effects of heat on fish species. For example, the population of two salmon species in Western Alaska (the Chinook salmon and the Chum salmon) is at historic lows. This is also reflected in the Red List of endangered species, which the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recently presented.
It stated that the Atlantic salmon population declined by 23 percent between 2006 and 2020. According to the report, climate warming affects the development of young salmon, reduces the availability of prey and allows invasive alien species to expand their range.
More and more sockeye salmon
In The Arctic Report However, a fish species whose population in the Arctic has increased enormously is also mentioned: the sockeye salmon. This species actually likes to spawn in warmer lakes, which are becoming more and more common. One of the authors of the report says otherwise Alaska Beacon However, this is not a reason for optimism.
“Not many people in Alaska have been able to take advantage of this,” he says. For fishermen, the increase in the species meant that they receive much less money for their fish. Alaska supplies more than half of the world’s sockeye salmon.
2023-12-13 22:15:28
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