Climate Change

With its vast expanses of ice-covered land and sea, the Arctic is extremely vulnerable to observed and projected climate change and its impacts. Over recent decades, regional temperatures have risen at twice the rate of the rest of the world, causing the Arctic to undergo some of the most rapid transformations on the planet. The most notable effects include an unprecedented loss of sea ice, accelerated melting of glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet, and thawing of the permafrost layer that underlies high-latitude land as well as the sub-sea continental shelf. At the same time, ocean currents and winds appear to be shifting.

Less visible changes are taking place as Arctic Ocean waters warm. The sea is turning more acidic from increasing levels of carbon dioxide, and scientists have detected the potent greenhouse gas, methane, seeping out from enormous seafloor deposits of methane hydrate, a “frozen” form of the gas.

With temperatures rising at twice the rate of the rest of the world, the Arctic has undergone some of the most rapid transformations on the planet, most notably the unprecedented loss of sea ice, and accelerated melting of glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Many of these mutations in the Far North are happening on significantly faster time scales than global climate models had predicted. And, critically, because Arctic systems play such a key role in the world’s climate, effects are beginning to ripple out to other regions, particularly in the form of rising sea levels from melting ice. 

Climate change will likely bring the Arctic region some economic benefits related to new opportunities for resource development and expanded shipping as the Arctic Ocean becomes more navigable. However, thawing permafrost will likely make seasonal transport across previously frozen land and rivers more difficult and costly. And, physical and ecological disruptions—already evident around the region—will increasingly affect human communities, natural systems, and infrastructure.