In the high latitudes near the North Pole, sea ice cover is reaching its peak. The Arctic is still shrouded in perpetual night, the first rays of sun remain weeks away.
But for the past week, over much of the region, it’s been freakishly warm — so warm it’s alarming scientists who study the polar ice cap and how it interacts with the sea and sky around it.
In February, north of the 80th parallel, the typical temperature is about 30 degrees below zero Celsius (minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit), said Jennifer Francis, an atmospheric scientist and research professor at Rutgers University. “Right now, it’s more like minus 8,” Francis told Seeker.
For Americans, that’s about 18°F — sweater weather to some hardy northerners. Temperatures around the Arctic are running double digits higher than normal, and readings in northern Greenland popped above the freezing mark over the weekend — “which as far as we know hasn’t happened before,” Francis said. And parts of the Arctic Ocean off Greenland that normally hold the thickest sea ice are wide open, said Laurence Dyke, a paleoglaciologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
“This is alarming in the immediate short-term, but it also does not bode well for the coming summer,” Dyke told Seeker. “This area should be frozen solid for months yet. I expect that sea ice will be much more mobile than is usual and will vulnerable to being swept out of the Arctic into lower, and warmer, latitudes to melt.”