The Greenland Spike Made Visible, And Just How Bad Things Already Are In The Arctic

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It gets worse. A team of researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks traveled to the Canadian Arctic recently and found the permafrost there is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted. They were astounded by how quickly a succession of unusually hot summers have destabilized the upper layers of giant subterranean ice blocks that had been frozen solid for millennia, according to a report in The Guardian. “What we saw was amazing,” Vladimir Romanovsky, a professor of geophysics at the university, told Reuters. “It’s an indication that the climate is now warmer than at any time in the last 5,000 or more years.“

The research by the University of Fairbanks has been going on for more than a decade, but when the plane the research team was riding in this year dipped below the clouds near an abandoned military installation 300 kilometers north of the nearest civilization, they were shocked to see the unbroken frozen tundra they expected had disappeared.

In its place was an undulating sea of hummocks — waist-high depressions and ponds known as thermokarst. Vegetation, once sparse, was flourishing. Professor Romanovsky said the scene reminded him of the aftermath of a bombardment. “It’s a canary in the coalmine,” said Louise Farquharson, a postdoctoral researcher and co-author of the study. “It’s very likely that this phenomenon is affecting a much more extensive region and that’s what we’re going to look at next.“

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Meanwhile, the putative president and the spineless Republican jellyfish continue to slavishly follow the wishes of the fossil fuel industry. The former brushes off climate warnings with a smug “I don’t believe it,” as if anyone could simply say that 2 + 2 = 4 is fake news if they wish to. The latter are too concerned with keeping the dollars flowing in from the Koch Brothers to care. The evidence suggests the world has already entered an era of unprecedented climate change, one that will see average global temperatures increase far more than 1.5º C, but global leaders are doing next to nothing to address the issue. Israel is dedicating a new community to Donald Trump. England is praying for a new Falklands war to take its mind off its Brexit troubles. And US secretary of state Mike Pompeo is jetting around the world crowing about how melting ice in the Arctic is a wonderful thing because it will make it easier to drill for oil and gas in the region.

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https://cleantechnica.com/2019/06/18/extreme-temperatures-are-melting-the-arctic/