Arctic Ice Is Crashing, and That's Bad News For Everyone [View all]

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This fits in exactly with our expectations of long-term climate change.'
Vice Motherboard Section
By Maddie Stone
Jul 30 2019, 7:46am

Over the next few days, Greenland is expected to roast as the weather system that fueled Europe’s second record-smashing heatwave of the summer marches north and west. Scientists are warning of what could be a near-record melt-out across the northern ice sheet’s surface, one that may also impact sea ice surrounding the island.

It’s just the latest manifestation of the high fever gripping the Arctic in a year where sea ice is running near record-low levels and Greenland has already sweated through one major melt event in June. And whether or not 2019 goes down as an all-time record year for Arctic ice losses on land or at sea—both of which experts say are possible—years of extreme ice demise like this one are consistent with a pattern of rapid transformation taking place up north due to human-caused climate change. “This fits in exactly with our expectations of long-term climate change,” Zack Labe, a climate scientist and PhD candidate at the University of California Irvine, told Motherboard, speaking of this year’s ice conditions.

Arctic sea ice loss doesn’t contribute to sea level rise. But its dramatic decline over the past 30 years is having a host of other impacts, from hastening coastal erosion to disrupting indigenous hunting and fishing activities that rely on the ice to alterning the the Arctic food chain from its base. What’s more, as shiny, reflective surfaces gives way to darker ocean water, the Arctic is absorbing more of the Sun’s energy, amplifying warming and hastening melt. There may even be connections between this Arctic amplification and the jet stream that can influence weather patterns further south.

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https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qv7gzm/arctic-ice-is-crashing-and-thats-bad-news-for-everyone