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Due to climate change in the Arctic, this polar region is expected to become "profoundly different" by 2050. [1]: 2321 The speed of change is "among the highest in the world", [1]: 2321 with the rate of warming being 3-4 times faster than the global average.
There are several reasons to expect that climate changes, from whatever cause, may be enhanced in the Arctic, relative to the mid-latitudes and tropics. First is the ice-albedo feedback, whereby an initial warming causes snow and ice to melt, exposing darker surfaces that absorb more sunlight, leading to more warming.
Feedbacks associated with sea ice and snow cover are widely cited as one of the principal causes of terrestrial polar amplification. [12] [13] [14] These feedbacks are particularly noted in local polar amplification, [15] although recent work has shown that the lapse rate feedback is likely equally important to the ice-albedo feedback for Arctic amplification. [16]
New research suggests the Greenland ice sheet is on track to cross a critical threshold that could cause runaway melting, but that it’s also possible the threshold will be crossed temporarily, ...
Those currents comprise half of the global thermohaline circulation that includes the flow of major ocean currents, the other half being the Southern Ocean overturning circulation. [ 2 ] The AMOC is composed of a northward flow of warm, more saline water in the Atlantic's upper layers and a southward, return flow of cold, salty, deep water.
Wang et al. [14] suggest that in addition to anomalous winds driving sea ice out of the Arctic through the Fram Strait, the positive phase of the Arctic dipole anomalies may also increase the flow of relatively warm waters from the North Pacific through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean. Warmer waters, in addition to increased sea ice ...
Ice shoves can be caused by temperature fluctuations, wind action, or changing water levels [3] and can cause devastation to coastal Arctic communities. Cyclical climate change will also play a role in the formation and frequency of ice shove events; a rise in global temperatures leads to more open water to facilitate ice movement.
Conditions in the Arctic have favored sea ice loss in recent years during the Northern Hemisphere summers. At the end of the 20th century, analyses of increasing Pacific Surface Water temperatures led to the discovery of a connection between these rising temperatures and the onset of severe loss of Arctic sea ice in the Beaufort Sea. A reason ...