Increasing air and sea surface temperatures, decreasing sea ice extent and Greenland ice sheet mass, and changing behavior of fish and walrus are among key observations released today in the Arctic Report Card 2015.
How much sunlight Earth reflects naturally varies a lot. The bigger the range of natural variability, the greater the odds that any evidence of a manmade effort to brighten up the planet would be lost in the “background noise.”
Large parts of the North American Arctic had their shortest snow-covered season on record, while parts of Eurasia had a longer-than-average snow-covered season.
Summer sea ice has been stable near these much smaller extents since around 2007.
Unusually large, late melt spike on Greenland in September 2022
September 23, 2022