The average air
temperature over Arctic land reached 2.3 degrees F (1.3 degrees C) above
average for the year ending in September. That’s the highest since
observations began in 1900.
The new mark was
noted in the annual Arctic Report Card, released Tuesday by the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Arctic centers on the North Pole
and reaches into North America and Eurasia.
"Warming is
happening more than twice as fast in the Arctic than anywhere else in the
world. We know this is due to climate change,” NOAA chief scientist Rick
Spinrad told reporters in San Francisco at a meeting of the American
Geophysical Union.
Another record
emerged for sea ice, which appears when Arctic Ocean water freezes. When it
reached its peak coverage in February, it was the lowest maximum extent
since records began in 1979. The minimum ice coverage, reached in September,
was the fourth lowest on record.
The retreat of sea
ice is considered a threat to animals like walruses, which use it for
mating, giving birth and getting out of the water.
Walruses can use
land instead to leave the water, but they are crowding onto beaches where a
stampede can be devastating for calves, two editors of the report card told
AP.
Walruses have been
hauling themselves out on land in northwest Alaska, a recent phenomenon,
Martin Jeffries of the federal Office of Naval Research and Jackie Richter-Menge
of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wrote in a joint email.
Snow cover in June
in both the North American and Eurasian parts of the Arctic was at the
second lowest level since records began in 1967. Reduced snow cover lets
more sunlight through to the land, which absorbs the energy and gets warmer.
Since 1979, the extent of June snow cover has been dropping by 18 percent
per decade, the study said.