

The Arctic is on fire and a record rise in temperatures has climate scientists worried

The Arctic is feverish and on fire — at least parts of it are. And that's got scientists worried about what it means for the rest of the world.
The thermometer hit a likely record of 38C in the Russian Arctic town of Verkhoyansk on Saturday, a temperature that would be a fever for a person — but this is Siberia, known for being frozen.
The World Meteorological Organisation said on Tuesday it's looking to verify the temperature reading, which would be unprecedented for the region north of the Arctic Circle.
The land surface temperature in the Siberia region of Russia, where a record-breaking temperature of 38C was registered in the Arctic town of Verkhoyansk on June 20. (Supplied)
"The Arctic is figuratively and literally on fire," University of Michigan environmental school dean Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist, said in an email.
"The record warming in Siberia is a warning sign of major proportions."
From January through May, the average temperature in north-central Siberia has been about eight degrees above average, according to the climate science non-profit Berkeley Earth.
The temperature on Earth over the past few decades has grown, on average, by 0.18 every 10 years, but, in the Russian Arctic it increases by 0.69C every decade. (AP/AAP)
"That's much, much warmer than it's ever been over that region in that period of time," Berkeley Earth climate scientist Zeke Hausfather said.
Siberia is in the Guinness Book of World Records for its extreme temperatures. It's a place where the thermometer has swung 106C, from a low of minus 68C to now 38C.
For residents of the Sakha Republic in the Russian Arctic, a heat wave is not necessarily a bad thing. Vasilisa Ivanova spent every day this week with her family swimming and sunbathing.
"We spend the entire day on the shore of the Lena River," said Ivanova, who lives in the village of Zhigansk, 430 kilometres from where the heat record was set.
In this handout photo provided by Olga Burtseva, children play in the Krugloe lake outside Verkhoyansk, the Sakha Republic, about 4660 kilometers (2900 miles) northeast of Moscow, Russia, Sunday, June 21, 2020.
Children play in the Krugloe lake outside Verkhoyansk, the Sakha Republic, about 4660 kilometres northeast of Moscow, Russia. (AP/AAP)
"We've been coming every day since Monday."
But for scientists, "alarm bells should be ringing," Overpeck wrote.
Such prolonged Siberian warmth hasn't been seen for thousands of years "and it is another sign that the Arctic amplifies global warming even more than we thought," Overpeck said.
Russia's Arctic regions are among the fastest warming areas in the world.
The temperature on Earth over the past few decades has been growing, on average, by 0.18C every 10 years.
A catastrophic oil spill from a collapsed storage tank last month near the Arctic city of Norilsk was partly blamed on melting permafrost. (AP/AAP)
But, in Russia it increases by 0.47C — and in the Russian Arctic, by 0.69C every decade, said Andrei Kiselyov, the lead scientist at the Moscow-based Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory.
"In that respect, we're ahead of the whole planet," Kiselyov said.
The increasing temperatures in Siberia have been linked to prolonged wildfires that grow more severe every year and the thawing of the permafrost — a huge problem because buildings and pipelines are built on them, said Vladimir Romanovsky, who studies permafrost at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Thawing permafrost also releases more heat-trapping gas and dries out the soil, which increases wildfires.
Meltwater ponding on the surface of the ice sheet in northwest Greenland. (AP/AAP)
"In this case it's even more serious, because the previous winter was unusually warm," Romanovsky said.
The permafrost thaws, ice melts, the soil subsides and then it can trigger a feedback loop that worsens permafrost thawing and "cold winters can't stop it," Romanovsky said.
In 2011, part of a residential building in Yakutsk, the biggest city in the Sakha Republic, collapsed due to thawing and subsidence of the ground.
Last August, more than four million hectares of forests in Siberia were on fire, according to Greenpeace. This year the fires have already started raging much earlier than the usual start in July.
Researchers look out from the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica as the sun sets over sea ice floating on the Victoria Strait along the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic. (AP/AAP)
Persistently warm weather, especially if coupled with wildfires, causes permafrost to thaw faster.
That in turn exacerbates global warming by releasing large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that's 28-times stronger than carbon dioxide, said Katey Walter Anthony, a University of Alaska Fairbanks expert on methane release from frozen Arctic soil.
"Methane escaping from permafrost thaw sites enters the atmosphere and circulates around the globe," she said.
"Methane that originates in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic. It has global ramifications."
And what happens in the Arctic can even warp the weather in the United States and Europe.
In the summer, the unusual warming lessens the temperature and pressure difference between the Arctic and lower latitudes where more people live, said Judah Cohen, a winter weather expert at Atmospheric Environmental Research, a commercial firm outside Boston.
That seems to weaken and sometimes even stall the jet stream, meaning weather systems such as those bringing extreme heat or rain can stay parked over places for days on end, Cohen said.
According to meteorologists at the Russian weather agency Rosgidromet, a combination of factors — such as a high pressure system with a clear sky and the sun being very high, extremely long daylight hours and short warm nights — have contributed to the Siberian temperature spike.
"The ground surface heats up intensively... The nights are very warm, the air doesn't have time to cool and continues to heat up for several days," said Marina Makarova, chief meteorologist at Rosgidromet.
Makarova added that the temperature in Verkhoyansk remained unusually high from Friday through Monday.
Scientists agree that the spike is indicative of a much bigger global warming trend.
"The key point is that the climate is changing and global temperatures are warming," said Freja Vamborg, senior scientist at the Copernicus Climate Change Service in the UK.
"We will be breaking more and more records as we go."
"What is clear is that the warming Arctic adds fuel to the warming of the whole planet," said Waleed Abdalati, a former NASA chief scientist who is now at the University of Colorado.

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