The Science of Massive Climate Change and Profound Impacts in the Far North: Arctic Report Card 2023

Last week, at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2023 conference (27,000 attendees) the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released their 18th version of the yearly Arctic Report Card, 2023 version.

I chat about this report in great detail here.

Report:
https://arctic.noaa.gov/report-card/report-card-2023/

Please donate at http://PaulBeckwith.net to support my research and videos as I join the dots on abrupt climate system mayhem.

Hello I’m Paul Beckwith about a week or so ago the um while the American geophysical Union conference was uh going on in um San Francisco uh the Noah released the Arctic report card 2023 so they’ve been releasing this report card annually usually during the agu conference um for the last 18 years and

Uh basically the Noah Arctic website you can find just by Googling arctic. noah.gov and um there’s lots of good articles about what Noah is doing in the Arctic they um action plan and then there’s these Focus areas and the Arctic report card is a big part of it also some of

The ships that they send up there their research Fisheries you know there’s lots of information uh from their main website but in this video I’m going to focus on the Arctic report card it’s 117 page report so clearly I’m not going to be able to talk about everything it’s open

Source um anybody can access it um and I’m going to go through and talk about some specific uh things that I find really interesting in the report before I do that um there’s of course we know that there’s huge Arctic amplification going on the arctic’s warming much much faster than the rest

Of the planet in fact four to five times as fast depending on how far up you go or even five to s five to eight times faster if you go to the go up north Mark Ser uh did a review uh paper in May 2011 on the Arctic and the Arctic

Amplification processes so I’m going to just show you uh some other things that are you know useful to know in light of the report so on Greenland there’s this Camp called Summit camp or Summit station it’s a year round staff research station it’s near the peak of the Greenland ice sheet it’s

3,216 m or 10,5 151 ft above sea level so very very high up um the population of the station is about five people in the wintertime and it reaches about 38 people in the summer so this is one of the main buildings it’s on stilt to reduce uh snow

Drifts um it’s run by the US National Science Foundation um and it’s right smack dab in the center of uh Greenland and it’s got a series of different buildings like a main building a place where people sleep uh the uh kitchens and food you know the big house

Is the um main structure it’s an insulated panel building houses The Galley common space and offices it’s elevated to minimize snow drifts there’s a geodic drill Dome on the top of it you can see it at the back here or over here okay so that’s where the drilling

The ice core drilling is done um and then there’s some smaller huts and um areas for sleeping quarter shopping area storage Etc um on July 1st 1993 the ice core reached the Bedrock so they drilled and extracted a core completely through originally this thing was only occupied

In the summer but now it’s been staffed year round since 2003 so it’s sitting SmackDown on top of the ice cap very very cold temperatures but lately um it’s been setting temperatures it’s been reaching temperatures above zero in June July and August uh for specific days um this

These are the record highs daily maximums are about – 11 -14 celus or so in the summer um but it has reached above zero with melting um there’s a an airport basically a landing strip uh Hercules aircraft uh lands on an air strip um 4,572 by 60 M so Runway basically or

15,000 ft Runway 197 ft wide snow Runway prepared in regularly groomed for ski equipped aircraft and in the winter the access is more infrequent uses like twin otter and stuff to go there so that’s um the uh Summit and I’ll be talking about that when I talk about Greenland of course

This is the jet streams and you can see you know remember whenever there’s a a ridge in the jet stream um then very warm humid air can come up and go right far up into the Arctic and these um Ridge patterns have brought um atmospheric rivers over up into

Greenland fairly frequently in the last number of years which is in the report one of my favorite sites used to be Arctic sea ice graphs but it hasn’t been run for quite a while you know if you look at the data it was it kind of stopped in 2020 unfortunately I me it

Was a lot of work to keep it up there is a map at the bottom of it which I really like to identify all the different regions of the the Arctic which I’m so you can refer to this map when I talk about different um different Regions the um this is a national snow and ice data center they have an interactive sea ice graph and you can see what the ice is doing the dash line is the 2012 record minimum you know it reached um about about 3 under 3.4 million square kilometers of sea ice and

You can see where we’re tracking in 2023 um you know we’re we dropped below the minimum for this time of year um recently and it’s passed it again so lots of good data there um there’s a good article uh you know um that was published in September of

This year called a wetter and a warmer and wetter Arctic insights from 20 years um erors record okay so the um the airs is the atmospheric infrared Sounder it’s on board the nasau aqua satellite that was launched in May 2002 collects twice daily global data of the Earth’s

Temperature and humidity for over 20 years okay so they use this data for lots of different things and it’s it’s so this paper is an analysis of how the Arctic has you know with the Arctic temperature amplification and the Jetstream ridges often coming up into the

Arctic uh it’s a much warmer and and wetter place so this paper highly recommend you have a look at it maybe I’ll do a separate video on it um it’s how you know it’s it’s got a lot of good information about what’s going on in the in the

Arctic um one of the things is that these atmospheric rivers are hindering the winter Arctic sea ice recovery so as we lose uh we’re losing more and more Arctic sea ice in the summer some atmospheric rivers and these atmospheric rivers run into The Fall season when the

Ice is supposed to start recovering or they can occur in the winter and they hinder the growth of winter sea um so there’s a paper more frequent atmospheric River slow the seasonal recovery of Arctic sea ice in nature climate change um about the increase of frequency of atmospheric Rivers into the

Arctic so these have big effects um and actually um these atmospheric Rivers have intensified surface downward long W longwave radiation and rainfall cause stronger melting of thin fra fragile ice over the of the sea ice accounted for about a third of the sea ice decline in the barent koses and in the central

Arctic okay so the AR atmospheric rivers in the Arctic are a big deal um The Greening of the Arctic I’ll talk about that’s one of the sections and it talks about this ndvi um parameter so if you’ve got healthy vegetation the near infrared radiation coming down about 50% is is uh

Reflected by healthy vegetation in the red visible red only about 8% is reflected by healthy vegetation the ndvi is simply a ratio it’s a05 minus 08 over 0.5 plus 008 so it’s 0.72 roughly for healthy veget vitation if you’ve got and this is satellite detected the these um reflectances if

You look at the unhealthy vegetation the near infrared is a bit lower it’s only 40% reflected but the red is 30% reflected it reflects lots of red I mean there’s Browns in here which have components of red so if you now do the the math the ndvi is 0.14 for unhealthy

Vegetation so this index lets us see and look at the vegetation um here here’s uh you know this is like a healthy tree uh case here and this is an unhealthy tree case here okay so from space we can assess the health of the vegetation okay so let’s go back to the

Report card and we’ll look at selected things um that that are in the report okay um so there’s lots of different things covered um the headlines and summary sort of summarize all of this stuff but I’m just going to go through the different sections you know maybe spend

A few minutes on each section um so this video um isn’t too long okay um you know we know the Arctic is warmer becoming warmer less Frozen and wetter there’s Regional Extremes in climate climate patterns and ecosystem responses okay so you know a couple of the highlights well it was the sixth

Warmest since 1900 the surface air temperatures um in the summer that’s globally a average or in the Arctic or the Arctic average if you like with the full year in the summer the surface air temperatures were the warmest on record so there was these warm temperatures there was wi widespread melting

Exceptional rainfall huge amounts of rainfall especially across the Greenland ice sheet as opposed to snowfall in the ocean the sea ice extent continued to decline the last 17 years have had the lowest sea ice on record um it was sixth lowest lowest in the satellite record in 2022 since 1979 um the

Sea surface temperatures are continuing to warm and setting records fact at about a half a degree celsius per decade really really fast rate there’s more there’s more phytoplankton blooms in the ocean so ocean primary productivity is is increasing significantly and um the rising sea levels of course have in they inundated

The terrestrial permafrost surrounding the Arctic Ocean on the Continental shelves so there’s about 2 and half million square kilometers of subc perit frost that is continuing to thaw out both at the bottom of it and and near the top okay a lot of people don’t know this permafrost there’s this permafrost

Under the under the ocean that is sawing as the ocean is warming on the land the snow cover extent in North America set a record low in May snow accumulation was above average but then it it warmed very very quickly and um snow coverage with record lows in June heavy precipitation events broke

Existing records of various locations in the Arctic the pan Arctic so across all of the Arctic precipitation for 2022 2023 was the sixth highest on record Summit station that I mentioned on Greenland the highest point it it was over zero had melt for the only the fifth time in its 34e observation

History Greenland II Lost 156 gigatons of mass that’s lower than normal because there was a lot of snowfall so this is the net um accumulation minus um melting the circumpolar peak Tundra greenness which is a measure of the overall vegetation including plants shrubs and trees taking over grassland and Tundra was measured

By satellites that’s the ndvi measurements and it was the third highest in the 24e record and in Finland they’re doing interesting uh rewilding Pet Land restoration and rewilding you know which is a globally relevant climate solution of carbon sinks building up the ability of soils in Pete

Pete lands to hold their carbon then communities working with commun communities in Alaska indigenous communities talked about how their world is changing uh Alaska salmon Western Alaska salmon abundance reached historic extremes so there are record lows for shinook and for chum salmon so shinook were down 81% below the 30-year mean

Chum salmon down 92% but there was record highs for scky salmon it was 98% above the your mean and the salmon are maturing at different sizes they’re smaller and they’re less umil less able to produce eggs um the ones that are spawning that are moving up river to spawn and that’s having huge

Impact to communities so so basically um you know the Arctic uh continues to rapidly evolve um and uh here’s some of the key points points um in the Arctic you know we’re getting extreme heat it’s wetter declining sea ice are key factors um there’s increasing algae Marine algae

Phytoplankton EUR Asian Arctic shows 57% increase between 2003 and 2023 as there’s less sea ice the ocean warms around the edges and you get this phytoplankton there’s early snow loss record low May snow cover um and in in in in the spring um and that lowers the albo because snow is highly reflective

Extreme precipitation um in Scandinavia the tundra is Greening high high Greening warm ocean waters near record melt um in parts of Greenland unprecedented wildfires in Canada so Canada was exposed to a lot of heat not much rainfall and that triggered the start of all of these wildfires and

We’ve had you know over 18 and a half million hectares burned this year and then the salmon in the streams of Alaska um has uh you know a couple species collapsing and one um taking off you know in in different in various Rivers um I showed you a map earlier

This is another map in the report um okay it talks about the wildfires in the aside here in Canada um you know Yellow Knife Northwest Territories you know 20,000 people evacuated um right it talks about specific things like near Juno Alaska glacial Lake burst through its ice dam caused unprecedented flooding in the

Mendenhal river a lot of tourists go and see that region um you know surface temperatures rising and Records being set so let’s look at the specific um the specific things that are going on okay so there’s 12 or 13 sections okay so surface air temperature in the Arctic so what’s happening well we’ve

Had above average pan Arctic when we say pan Arctic we mean across the Arctic 60 to 90° North the annual surface air temperatures uh continued to be above average ranking they were the sixth warmest since 1900 the Brent sea region had above average surface air temperatures in All

Seasons large anomalies in the summer okay we had the warmest summer on record in 2023 that’s for July to August September um in the Arctic okay so the warming near surface air and upper ocean temperatures in the Arctic represent an ongoing signature of Arctic change the regional warming rate exceeds

That of the global mean right that’s called Arctic amplification I call it Arctic temperature amplification the hydrological cycle has changed we’re getting more uh you know wetter Arctic more rainfall less snowfall right there’s declines in terrestrial snow cover in land ice and in sea ice there’s more frequent Extreme Air Temperature

Events okay um and that has huge effects on detrimental effects on the biology the biophysical aspects plants and animals in the Arctic the we’re getting more th and more Coastal erosion with a lacking sea ice um and of course these things have effects globally okay so let’s just look we’ll

Concentrate on the um on the figures okay so this is the um the red is the Arctic um air temperature data degrees Celsius um the Baseline is 1991 to 2020 hey we’ll use that Baseline and say that we’re still under 1.5 Celsius there you go heavy sarcasm noted okay

So so here you see the uh the Arctic temperatures the the rate of Rise is very significant the last number of years have been very very warm and this is the global temperatures um from from godart Institute of Space uh temperature temperature data sets this is a European

Data set so you can see you know the there’s huge Arctic temperature and amplification going on uh seasonal air temperature patterns this was Autumn of 2022 um you know 5 degrees warmer these are anomalies relative to a recent 30-year average 1991 to 2020 in fact the most recent 30-year average and you can

See there’s still hot spots of 5 degree anomalies above even this really near-term Baseline so this is in the Autumn of 2020 to the winter so so autumn is um September October November and then winter December January February right still hot spots here um spring Alaska was cooler over the ice it

Was a bit cooler but the continents are very very warm and that extended into the summer of 2023 2023 was a exceptionally warm year you know globally but these are the the what’s going on in the Arctic then these are mean sea level pressures in hexa pascals

Um so you can see uh you can relate the warm and cold areas to these sort of you know air pressures and things um okay so that’s temperature in the Arctic exceptionally warm now terrestrial snow cover in the Arctic the North American May snow cover extent set

A record low in 2023 lowest in the 57-year record that was associated with very high spring temperatures across the Northwest Territories in Nuna snow accumulation in the winter was above average um so the snow melt was extremely rapid in the spring to set a record low since 2010 there’s a near

Complete absence of snow cover in June in Eurasia for 11 of the 14 years this lack of June snow cover did not occur at all between 1967 and 2009 okay now the snow cover is very important because it makes the Arctic a darker place when we lose it um in the

Spring and it really primes the Melt season for the uh sea ice in in you know big time okay so of course many arctic land surface processes are directly influenced by snow cover from fall through spring including the surface energy budget the ground thermal regime the permafrost terrestrial and freshwater

Ecosystems okay if the land is covered with snow versus not covered with snow it affects all of these things very in very significant ways the influence of the spring Snowman melt timing persists through impacts on River discharge timing and magnitude surface water soil moisture vegetation phenology like the

Timing of growth and the risk of fires all of these things are affected by snow cover you know I’m mostly talk about the um effects on albo in the overall Arctic but affects all it affects many many different things so there’s different ways of looking at it we can look at

Snow cover extent we can look at snow cover duration and we can look at snow water equivalent in the snow pack so all of those things are important and um there’s information here so this is the snow cover um extent anomaly okay it’s just the the surface area covered by snow the anomaly

In May from 1970 to present day and you can see the strong decline in both the North American Arctic the black line and the red line the Eurasian Arctic okay this is in May and this is in June so the drop is even larger in

June so the lack of snow cover in May June means the Arctic is a much darker place because instead of light being reflected by white snow it’s um absorbed in the dark surface of the Earth okay um there’s snow cover uh duration right the the duration anomalies right the number of snowf free

Days is increasing significantly in the Arctic okay um this is in the snow onset months August to January and this is in the snow melt months February to July okay so so the um the the red is is is uh increased snowf free days and the blue is decreased snow fre free

Days okay then there’s a snow mass and snow water equivalent um and that’s uh that’s shown here April snow Mass anomalies you can see that there is fluctuation okay there is there is year-to-year fluctuation um not strong I mean barely downward Trends and then that have then

Increased so we’re getting a lot more um it’s a lot wetter snow I mean it was decreasing overall till about 2010 and then it started to increase you know we’re getting wetter snow which has a higher water content this is snow water equivalent anomalies or or snow water equivalent anomalies um

In um this is March April May June so there was you know it’s wetter in the Arctic in these months but then come June uh things really really dried out it was warm things dried out and this was a big huge problem in for Canadian fires this is why the Canadian fires

Took off because it was very hot and very dry okay um so there’s a huge albo effect from from the uh snow cover in the spring which is can be equivalent to the albo effect from the sea ice and people always talk about the sea ice going increasing the um the sea ice

Going decreasing the albo in the Arctic so it absorbs more radiation but the snow cover has just as big an effect as the Ci’s decline the snow cover collapse in the spring okay precipitation in the Arctic so the pan Arctic mean precipitation it was the sixth highest on record right the precipitation amount

It was above the N the the long-term average in All Seasons but there were heavy precipitation events that broke exist in records in various locations across the Arctic um notable region anomalies during the 20123 to 2023 water year very wet winter over Parts of Alaska very dry over Western Eurasia very dry summer

Over Northern Canada record rains in Scandinavia okay so so of course the dry summer in Canada led to all of those wildfires okay so consistent with our Arctic warming precipitation in the Arctic is increasing significantly okay so this is a water year this is for the whole year the

Increase in the this is so so what we have down here is the water year this is the percent um of the relative to the 1991 to 2020 Baseline so we’re seeing an increase in the amount of water um throughout the year um this is January through March and this is April through

June bigger trend for January through March July through September okay so the Arctic is definitely becoming a wetter place um this is this is the distribution uh on from the maps the seasonal total precipitation in centimeter anomaly okay so so the the brown areas are are less and the green areas are more

Water so this is in the the Autumn then the winter the spring and the summer so the there’s basically more precipitation over the ice you know closer you know surrounding the North Pole right in each of these cases but look at the drying of the continents here especially in Canada

This is why the Wildfire season was so bad okay so again the Autumn is October November December the winter January February March three months spring April May June and summer July August September okay is how how is the divisions of the seasons um and uh you know heavy precipitation events

Are occurring heaviest rains you know huge rains in Norway for example water levels and pressure caused a dam to break on Norway’s largest river um that was in in August extensive flooding in Sweden heavy rains um in in the northern northern countries okay um this is showing the um

The wetest places and the driest places so you can see specific regions in the Autumn that were wet in the winter in the spring and the summer so we’re getting extremes right nobody lives in an average climate it’s the extremes that always come and get you okay um there’s a whole section on

The Greenland ice sheet okay so basically the winter snow accumulation was above average but the Greenland ice sheet still lost 156 gigatons of mass from September 1st 2022 to 31st of August 2023 because the discharge of ice um calving and melting exceeded the accumulation but in the last number of

Years it’s been greater loss um this year there was more snow to Tamper some of that loss summer high pressure system so ridges in the jet stream brought warm temperatures widespread melting and except rainfall volumes especially in atmospheric Rivers the in the in June 26 2023 the

Summit station which I talked about at the beginning of the video um it was above zero that’s only the fifth time in the 34e observational history that that’s happened okay so this is the total mass change in gigatons of Greenland um you know pretty straight Trend downward um

Okay this is measured from the grace gravity anomaly mass balance satellites okay um and this is uh this is melt anomaly days okay um more days where there’s melting around the fringes of Greenland Northwest Northeast and Southern parts of Greenland um this is the Melt fraction reached 50%

Um so not not a record there were some years that were you know close to 97 100% but still very very high nonetheless um this is the um albo anomaly for the summer June July August 2023 um and you can see the albo anomaly um it’s a bit darker than normal

It’s it’s it’s uh actually so sorry the blue is uh higher albo brighter so lots of snow in those regions the brown is darker drop of albo this shows the bare Ice Area on Greenland in 2023 um so you know as you get um as you get the heat of the summer you get the snow on the top melting exposing bare ice um this is the albo um 0 79% right it’s it’s ice it’s reflective um there is variation up to

80% as low as 76% this was a very high melt year I believe same here the alido drop because a lot of dirt and crud was exposed right so so interesting you can track that and this is areas this is the Melt season ablation or the ice

Melt um and uh so very high uh you know ice melt 3 m 3 and a half meters of ablation um 3 m you know it’s it’s all around the fringes um okay so the ablation anomaly in percent um this is uh solid ice discharge gigatons per year um in

Different parts of the um continent so you can see how it’s tracking through time and when you add it all up you get the total loss of um ice from Greenland notable melt episodes um you know melt conditions were occurring on 36% of the ice sheet surface um in September unprecedented for

September um there was a second late season melt event when warm air is so associated with the aftermath of hurricane Fiona reached Greenland on September 26 2022 melt area peaked at 15% right there was significant rainfall events and there was another melt period in August a high-press dome of pulled

Southerly winds up the west coast to the northern ice divide the air flowed back south and descended along the ice sheet surface to the east coast the compression as the air ascended it caused warm dry conditions caused a lot of ice loss um in a single week in July

Ablation lowered the ice sheet surface at South dome right that which is at the top of Greenland uh by 40 cm in a single week a record pace of melt okay um so lots of good data from the gravity and omaly satellites Greenland’s melt melting quickly okay sea

Ice so sea ice and it was the sixth lowest in the satellite record downward Trends are continuing the last 17 September extents of Arctic sea ice are the lowest 17 in the record the amount of multi-year ice was largely unchanged from the year before um multi-year extent is far lower

Than in the 1980s there’s very little old ice ice is greater than four years old the average sea ice sickness it was lower than the previous winter um but near the averages okay now the sea ice of course it’s a frozen interface Between the Ocean and the atmosphere so it reduces the absorption

Of solar energy because of its high albo relative to the dark open ocean underneath it’s a physical barrier so it modifies Heat heat and moisture transfer between the atmosphere and ocean so it turns the Arctic into like a continental climate when it’s covered with sea ice key role in the

Ecosystem and uh you know all kinds of it’s it’s very important I don’t need to to dwell on this how important it is let’s look at the data this is the the percent this is the sea ice decline in March versus the sea ice decline in September okay Through The Years okay so

The trend is still sharply down um these are extents uh September daily minimum was 4.24 4.23 this is uh um 10 the 6 or million square kilometers so it was the six uh lowest out of 45 years of data the 1991 to 2020 average is 5.37 so was lower

Than that by over a million square kilometers and the trend it’s losing 77,6 square kilometers per year is the average Trend downward that’s the slope of the uh of the curve the dash line okay and you can see the sea ice extend in March and in September

Relative to the the mean so lots of ice missing in September and the Sea Ice Age this is a really interesting plot so in 1985 there was a large chunk of old ice right and uh this was the new the the the ice less than a year old one to

Twoe ICE 2 to threee ice green uh 3 to four year ice and over four years lots of old ice here’s where we are in 2023 almost no old ice little bit down here 3 to four years a ice you can’t really see hardly any there’s 2 to three

A Ice 1 to two a ice and Z most is zero to one year okay this was all formed in the winter um 2022 2023 right so huge a completely different place this is multi-year ice the de you know greater than a year old declining this is the old ice greater

Than four years dropping almost to to zero in the Arctic Ocean and then the sea ice sickness um there’s here’s how it is from October through April for um recent years okay so so so here so so uh it’s basically it’s in the middle here it’s not the

Highest or lowest in 20 20 22 2023 the circles um the lowest is the triangles um and is the green 2020 2021 and the highest is the 2021 2022 but basically you know it’s starting off it reaches a minimum September thickness you know it’s between you know 1 to

1.4 uh met thick and then by you know by and then and then it’s increasing through the winter by you know the end of the winter it’s the thickest it’s you know between about 1.5 and 2 m so you know it’s a lot thinner than it was before um this is

The how thick it is in different regions okay it’s thickest down here where the ice is ridged up it’s pushed up by the the um flow of the ice patterns it’s kind of accumulated and piled up and uh so you can see the thickness dropping off around the fringes and this

Is the anomaly if you like okay so it’s been disappearing in these brown or orange areas faster okay but again that’s probably an anomaly relative to yeah the 2010 to 2022 average yeah okay very recent um Baseline and this is SE ice volume uh hasn’t changed a whole lot okay there’s

Increases and decreases the ice for the volume formed the volume melted volume form melted each year okay so there’s some fluctuation but it’s uh it seems to have stabilized a little bit I mean we we’re seeing big surprises in Antarctica of course sea surface temperatures of

Course you know the ice is going so the mean sea surface temperatures were 5 to 7° C warmer um then 1991 to 2020 August mean values in the Brent Cara lapb and bord seas it was a bit cooler in batham Bay the Greenland sea parts of the Chucky

Sea okay to Alaska was colder um the August mean sea surface temperatures are showing warming Trends in almost all Arctic Ocean regions that are ice free in August okay the increases over regions between 65 north and 80 north or about half a degree celsius per decade so this

Is a huge warming takes a lot of energy to heat up the water and it’s happening okay so this is the Arctic Ocean ocean this is the sea surface temperature in August 2023 10° at the outskirts and then as you get closer to the ice it gets closer

And closer to zero course sea water freezes at minus 2 um so you see some areas um where where the water temperature you know is below zero but it’s still water not ice um these are the anomalies relative to this recent Baseline like I said we should use this Baseline and talk about

The global average temperature above that Baseline because then we can say we’re under 1.5 right um this is the sea surface temperature anomaly you know these regions here 5 degrees warmer than normal notice the rivers coming up here Rivers coming here Rivers coming here so the land is warming and that water is

Running off and it’s very warm and it’s going in and it’s keeping the sea surface temperature extremely warm 5 degrees Celsius warmer this is August of 2023 relative to 2022 so still you know lots of I mean it was very warm in these regions in

2022 as well but not not in this region this is the McKenzie river coming up from Canada into the Arctic so that’s having big effects um this is uh more sea surface temperature anomalies you’ve got the ice this is June 2023 um July 2023 and August so you can see you know

As the ice is retreating back you get very very warm uh temperatures um around the fringes of the ice and this is the um linear trend of sea surface temperature warming degrees Celsius per year 1982 to 2023 and the peak here is about 0.1 15°

C uh per year in the hottest areas in the overall Arctic it’s about it’s the average is about here this sort of shade you know 0.05 degrees celus increase per year in the Arctic sea surface temperatures Baffin um it’s been a larger increase but there’s a lot of

Fluctuation so this year happened to be very cool gyration large large variability uh August 2022 um from sea surface temperature anomalies and then you get the um from from different uh data sets Okay so this is an improved higher resolution data set you can see more detail um this is sea ice concentration

In here uh okay uh now ocean primary productivity of course as we lose sea ice as the water’s warming it’s exposed to sunlight we can get Marine algae to grow um so as sea ice declines we’re getting more life in the oceans so satellite estimates of ocean primary

Productivity I.E the rate at which Marine algae transform dissolved inorganic compound into organic material while the C algae is growing uh so it looks at chlorophyll a I believe so all regions are showing positive Trends with a few exceptions um so the largest increase is in the Eurasian Arctic a 57.4 increase in

Productivity in the Brent sea 20.7% increase okay so of course the rapidly warming Arctic Ocean and peripheral seas are undergoing shifts in Marine primary productivity driven by Dynamic changes in sea ice extent nutrient Dynamics and the light regimes so sunlight no ice sun light can go right into the ocean and

Stimulate the phytoplankton blooms okay so it’s chlorophyll a that is looked at so chlorophyll a is in all species of phytoplankton so it changes the color the ocean color and this can be detected by satellites so let’s have a look at the results here so this is May June July and

August and um this is the chlorophyll a concentration percent of average so it’s the Baseline is 2003 to 2022 basically is the average so the green is much above average the brown is below that average and you can see areas where there’s huge amounts of phytoplankton and you can see the progression through

Through uh time the green areas is more you know but again it’s a it’s a recent average um this is the uh sea ice concentration anomalies okay so where the SE where there’s less sea ice there’s more phytol Plankton you know just makes sense you can see where the anomalies are each each

Month um this is the mean annual primary productivity so it’s in gr of carbon per square meter per year the change and you can see um where the productivity is high and where it’s lower okay this is the trend uh where you can see so a lot of

The inlets and stuff are very prolific areas for primary productivity for fight of Plankton this is 2023 annual primary Pro productivity um again and then the uh percent of the average okay so it’s showing you the trends okay and you can look at the trends of the primary productivity grams

Of carbon per square meter per year uh in the various regions so big rise in Eurasian Arctic not so much in amasian Arctic sea of OT Bearing Sea Brent sea Greenland sea not much change Hudson Bay Baffin Bay Labrador sea not much change North Atlantic okay so you can see how

The primary productivity is changing in all of the different regions um this is the annual net primary productivity teragrams of carbon in the Arctic region defined as 60 to 90 North from 2003 3 to 2023 and the trend is an increase of 15.5 terog of carbon per year the

Average the percent change over the 21-year time series is an increase of 19.3% so as there’s less sea ice there’s more sunlight warmer water we’re getting an increase in the productivity of the in the in the Arctic okay not a surprise there that’s in the oceans uh we’re also

Getting a greening Arctic Greening of the lands in the Arctic okay so the circumpolar average Peak Tundra greenness value in 2023 it was the third highest in the 24e modus satellite record Peak vegetation greenness was much higher than usual in North American tundra in the bord sea region greenness was relatively low in

Eurasia okay the8 highest uh Tundra greenness values were in the last 12 years okay so the tundra biome 5.1 million square kilometer region it forms a ring of cold adapted treeless vegetation on top the globe bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the North and the Boreal forest to the South okay it’s

Changing profoundly as vegetation and underlying permafrost soils are strongly influenced by Rising air temperatures the rap decline of sea ice on the nearby Arctic Ocean so there has been a sharp increase in tundra vegetation productivity since the late 1990s this is called The Greening of the

Arctic okay so let’s just have a look at some of the results here so you can see this is the trend from 1982 to 2022 in The Greening of the Arctic on all the land around the Arctic um this is um from 2000 to 2023 so uh 23e time period and this is

Going back uh 40 years okay you can see um this is the ndvi which I showed you um let’s go back to if I can find it here here we go okay so V 72 for healthy vegetation v0.14 for unhealthy vegetation okay um unhealthy healthy

Okay so you can see um you know the Greening is increasing these are these guys are all increasing this is uh North America this is across the whole Arctic um this is across the whole Arctic with another detector and this is Eurasia okay so it’s a lot higher in

Eurasia to begin with and it’s in you know the the slope of increase is similar in all these different cases again here we go um 2000 to 2023 you can see the specific detail of Where The Greening is occurring we had drought in North America you know um and

Thus all the Wildfire so The Greening didn’t occur so much here not so much health in in trees this I like this diagram this shows you know got the river here you’ve got Lakes you’ve got green areas and darker areas U this is uh there’s something the Arctic parts of

The Arctic are undergoing this shrub ification which is an increase in the cover height and biomass of tundra shrubs like Willows Birches and Alders okay um and uh if you have a slump of the permafrost that can really darken areas that can wipe out The Greening in

Certain areas or if you have wildfires on the tundra right they saww the permafrost underneath and they decrease the ndvi you can detect that so you know we can be seeing some of that in these areas you know maybe these areas were exposed to lots of fire I don’t know

Okay so you can see that um going on and let’s move on to uh permafrost this is a very important key area the permafrost beneath the Arctic Ocean margins so since the end of the last glacial maximum 21,000 years ago of course rising sea levels covered up the

Land and there was Perma frost on the land and so now it’s subc permafrost it’s frozen ground underneath the ocean floor there’s an estimated 2.5 million square kilometers of subsea permafrost today it continues to thaw because the original ocean inundated it and and now the ocean is warming the arctic’s

Warming so it’s continuing to thaw um it’s distributed on the Continental shells and we need to know more about how much is is coming up okay I like how it says here even among scientists it’s not widely known that sediment beneath many continental shells surrounding the Arctic Ocean is

Frozen in areas that were exposed and not glaciated at the last glacial maximum about 21,000 years ago there was prolonged sub areial exposure no water on top so the ground froze down to hundreds of meters below the surface creating permafrost during de glaciation sea levels rose right that 120 M ocean

Water inundated Coastal perm Frost at low elevations so basically we have this subsea permafrost today and it’s sawing as the ocean warms so here’s uh the total ice content um right very high Regions near the coastline where the water shallower and you can see you know this massive continental shelf the East Siberian

Shelf lapb shelf there’s also the Caris shelf but you can see there’s vast amounts of subc permafrost in those regions um and most of the measurements are done in the bford sea okay um so these are uh the these are um drilling wells in Canada and these are drilling wells in

The US this is the minimum extent of the subc permafrost um this is discontinuous ice bonded permafrost continuous ice bonded permafrost and shallow ice okay so this is where we’ve got a lot of information about the subc permafrost you know the the the over the Russian shells we have very little

Information okay um this is ice content um over some of the Russian shells um this is off the yaml peninsula in this region here gas flares seismic profiles water depth it’s only 20 M deep out as far as this so there’s vast amounts of permafrost underneath these shells but

Not so much data right so we need to find out a lot more about it because it’s like a tipping ticking Time Bomb um this is showing um this whole section is on AR Arctic communities um First Nations Arctic communities and what their observations are you know how their lives are being

Greatly changed so there’s a whole bunch of different communities in Alaska and uh their their information they’re Co collaborating with Scientists um giving observations um you know global warming is happening it’s affecting different villages in different ways um right we need to get lots of observations and see how these dramatic

Changes are playing out basically this is um this is uh C Sub C subu so you can go back to look at this community down here and uh basically what happened there were three strong storms the July 18th storm had the strongest winds Southwest winds to 50 m an hour brought

In a storm surge that set the record pushed all the water into the community caused severe flooding wind High Surf and a lot of rain then there was a second storm on July 28th 10 days later and then there was another one on September 14th to

18th think we lost more Earth to the Ocean than ever before so Coastal erosion and inundation of coastal communities here’s some Coastal erosion at another region the loss of an ice Celler right the ground thawing out um wind Fog rain and sun to ref to go wailing bears are keeping the

Community bit um busy right High count of polar bears 48 around the area Okay so these are all you know they’re they have to look for food the polar bears so more polar bears is a recent chain okay so all of these observations you know what the pack ice is

Doing um what other animals there are what what the fishing is like so all of this stuff is you know very very important and it’s educating you know people as to the changes now Petland so I think this is the last section I do want to talk about this quickly um so

There’s so Finland has all kinds of pands the scale of Petland degradation has been severe there’s been you know over the years but now parts of it are being restored and rewilded 52,000 hectares not a lot but it’s a start okay so the context for Finland and Northern Europe so these are

Provinces in Finland lap Land North Carell are a couple that are being rewilded um so here’s uh so basically a lot of the Pete lands were drained so ditches were put in to drain the water away and then the Pete was dug up so this is the ditched this is the Pete

Land that have the ditches for drainage out of the total so you can see you know areas down here 81 to 100% of the Pete lands in those areas are drained these areas are are are left more untouched okay this area here basically untouched as you go higher up okay this is the

Ditching that was done in in Finland from 1930 to 2010 you can see huge areas of were were were ditches were put in and then all these ditches were put in for forestry and uh more ditches were put in here okay so so the idea is to reverse some of

This stuff to rewind these areas so this is uh an area an Arctic Pete land uh River and water water and some Forest it’s being rewilded there’s a it’s called the landscape rewilding program or lwp very very interesting program um areas that were logged and um

Pet Land was and drained um are trying are being restored okay so there’s a big project of re you know You’ probably heard about rewilding and uh you know rewilding of Pete lands restoration Pete Len can make them huge carbon sinks again sinks that they’ve lost um so this is a some

Restoration work from the summer okay so there’s a very interesting projects here you know I recommend you know this is a good news uh situation um it gives a history of the ditches and the the Samy Forest those their first nation’s people Finland has Boreal and Arctic Pete lands over 10

Million hectares of Pete lands within its borders as 30% of the land area of Finland globally P land store more than 30% of the remaining soil-based carbon in the world today the proliferation of industrial forestry and Pete mining degraded more than 5 million hectares more than half of the Finnish Petland through the

Stitching process process of draining Petland through removing vegetation digging water canals to the Peete dries prior to Industrial processing and there’s there’s an example here it it talks about the history of commercialization and Industrial processing it I I do want to bring up one thing here um there’s an area of 180 there

There’s they’re they’re building nine large Wetlands spanning 180 hectares that capture Peete sediment and heavy metals prevent more CO2 from leaving the PE soils so this region had four to six species of birds and then they did the rewilding and now it’s an important bird habitat with 25 species recorded you

Know including regionally rare species okay so they’ve moved they’ve changed this area from four to six species you know severely ecologically degreg um degreg um severely impacted by human um effects degraded region and you know four to six species of birds and after the rewelding 215 species so this is a huge success

Story and if it can be scaled up across many other countries you know Northern Canada Northern Russia Etc we have an opportunity to capture huge amount of carbon okay so that’s a good news part so so basically um there there’s one other section I thought that was the last section but I

Think this is the last one Salmon Alaska salmon okay uh it’s all in this image here so here’s Alaska here’s the rivers Yukon River Another River Bristol Bay there was record low abundance 81% below 30-year average in the UK River of this um shinook salmon the chum salmon dropped even more 92% okay

So and the in Bristol Bay the Sakai salmon population went up 98% above average okay so there’s different Trends depending on different species so you know the the key is to try to find out why the species were degrading so much why it increased so much for this

Species and and so on so you know and there’s lots of plots of this is the Yukon river the uh shinook is the yellow the chum is the blue um in these two rivers and then we have the Sakai you know hitting record high levels in

Bristol Bay okay so it’s looking at how temperatures and climate change affects that body length of Chinooks dropping quickly over the years 1970 to the present day Chum and Sakai small drops not so so large and the the fertility the number of eggs per female the fund has been dropping off significantly and

Sh putting huge population pressures on so you can look at the implications of of that on people on and there’s different commercial Fisheries there’s subsidence uh fisheries and uh you know you can see the the saky a huge almost 60 60 million in the peak here um right a huge you

Know record record amount okay so I think that was the uh the end so if you’re still with me thanks for listening um please consider donating to my website Paul beck. net to support my research and videos so very extensive report but I think it was

Worth the time to to go through it to see you know all these different changes that are occurring in the Arctic and the consequences of these uh changes so thanks again and bye for now