Arctic facing yet another anus horribilis
Print Edition
Scientists say 2019 could be another annus horribilis for the Arctic with record temperatures already registered in Greenland — a giant melting icicle that threatens to submerge the world’s coastal areas one day.
“It’s possible that we could break the records set in 2012 for both lowest Arctic sea ice extent ... and for record high Greenland ice sheet melt,” warned Ruth Mottram, a climatologist at the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI). “It is very much dependent on weather conditions this year.”
A striking photograph of the early ice melt taken last week by a DMI scientist in northwestern Greenland has gone viral.
While researching oceanographic moorings and a weather station, Steffen Olsen snapped a picture of his sled dogs pushing through a fjord, the sea ice submerged under several centimeters of meltwater.
Under a bright blue sky, with a snow-free mountain in the background, the dogs appear to be walking on water.
Locals who accompanied Olsen’s expedition “didn’t expect the sea ice to start melting that early. They usually take that route because the ice is very thick, but they had to turn back because the water was deeper and deeper and they couldn’t” advance, she said.
On June 12, the day before the photograph was taken, the closest weather station in Qaanaaq registered temperatures of 17.3 degrees Celsius, just 0.3 points lower than the record set on June 30, 2012. Ice is melting six times faster now than in the 1980s and the forecasts are alarming.
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