Why does the Arctic warm faster than the rest of the planet?

[knocker]

While the Earth’s surface as a whole has warmed by around 1.2C since the industrial revolution, temperatures are not rising at the same rate in all corners of the world.

One difference is the faster pace that land areas are warming compared to the ocean. But perhaps the biggest outlier is the Arctic, which is warming more than two times faster than the global average (pdf). 

This phenomenon – known as “Arctic amplification” – is causing dramatic changes for Arctic communities and has also been linked to extreme weather events in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere.

The cause of this rapid warming is typically identified as the changing “albedo” of the Arctic’s surface – where the loss of snow and sea ice means less incoming sunlight is reflected back out to space. 

But the reality is a little more complicated than that. In a new paper, published in Frontiers in Earth Science, my co-authors and I unpack the different factors that are contributing to the fast pace of change in the Arctic.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-does-the-arctic-warm-faster-than-the-rest-of-the-planet?utm_campaign=Carbon Brief Weekly Briefing&utm_content=20220211&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue Weekly