Climate Change Hitting Arctic Harder and Faster than Previously Thought

To put this in perspective, last year’s reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted that melting the entire Greenland ice sheet would raise sea levels by 7.3 metres. We’re not saying this is going to happen soon (right now all we know for sure is that there is a far greater loss of ice mass in the past few years than had been predicted by scientific models), but if we do pass a tipping point then it will happen.

Personally, I consider that (along with all of the other impacts of rapid global warming) to be an unacceptable legacy to leave to my son and his potential future kids. So if the various climate tipping points keep me up at night (there are 15 of them), they also provide a great reason to get out of bed in the morning, hop on my bike and try to turn back the rising tide of greenhouse gases (with your help, of course).

My colleague Dr Martin Sommerkorn – one of the report’s authors and the Senior Climate Change Adviser at WWF International’s Arctic Programme – will be launching the report today at an intergovernmental meeting of all the arctic nations. He’ll be telling them that given the magnitude of the physical and ecological changes in the Arctic, the debate can no longer focus only on creating protected areas and allowing arctic ecosystems to find their balance. Instead, we need to simultaneously reduce the vulnerability of social and environmental systems of the Arctic by reducing threats from human activity (not only human-induced global warming, but also new mining and oil projects made viable as the Arctic melts) and building ecosystem resilience (the ability of ecosystems to remain stable when under a lot of pressure).

Go Martin.

by Keith Stewart