The Arctic Report Should Give All of Us Incentive to Invest in Our Environment
It’s the end of the year and reports are in! It’s what every student either dreads or anticipates with eagerness.
Since 2006 an annual report card drawn from a compilation of scientists from around the globe, has given us insight into the health of the northernmost part of our planet.
This year, 2022, the report brought together nearly 150 Arctic scientists from 11 countries.
The conditions in the Arctic have very real consequences for the people of the area and the world at large. For the locals and those living close to the top end, it affects their immediate livelihood as it affects travel, farming, hunting and other day-to-day activities.
The big takeaways from the latest report, which has been consistently getting worse over the years, is that:
– Instead of snow, it has been raining significantly.
– The sea ice that is needed to form to protect coastlines from erosion during storms is being delayed in its formation.
– Warmer weather (the last seven years have been the hottest on record for the region,) is making a mess of the Arctic’s seasons. With earlier snowmelt wildfires get an earlier than usual start and find a way into new territory. By June of 2022 fires had scorched a record scorched 1 million acres.
– Thinning ice on rivers and lakes makes travel more dangerous for the locals.
– The Greenland ice sheet continues to send freshwater and ice into the ocean which raises sea levels globally.
– This is the sixth consecutive year of beach-cast seabirds in the Bering Strait region (birds are dying at an alarming rate).
The precipitation which is falling as rain rather than snow during the winter months doesn’t just disrupt life for humans, but for wildlife and plants as well.
Local communities are facing great risk of unprecedented river flooding.
Winter rain can create layers of ice that prevent reindeer from getting to vegetation under the snow.
Animals and plants evolve to certain conditions over thousands of years and this shift toward rainier seasons is disruptive to their survival and the survival of the local people who rely on these plants and animals for food.
Arctic-wide, this shift toward wetter conditions can disrupt the lives of animals and plants that have evolved for dry and cold conditions, potentially altering Arctic peoples’ local foods.
As stated earlier, Arctic warming doesn’t only impact the Arctic itself. This year, 2022, for the 25th year in a row, the Greenland ice sheet lost ice! That’s a big problem for the whole planet. This promotes rising sea levels, which consequently puts coastal communities around the world in danger of flooding and storm surges.
This is a geological age (Anthropocene) where human activity is a major influence on our environment.
This is a time when the whole planet needs to be working together to tackle this problem. Governments need to get their act together and get more intensely pro-active. This is not a time for partisan squabbling. Companies need to also proactively reign in their destructive habits.
We can also play our part in reducing greenhouse gasses by taking measures such as being conscious of the products we buy, reducing, recycling and renewing and investing in renewable energy like solar.
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