Conference Report: Arctic Warming, Deadly Dance

MURROW CENTER 2013 INTERNATIONAL INQUIRY A WITCH’S BREW ARCTIC WARMING + GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE The Arctic—at the center of the The grounding of Shell Oil’s huge security issues plaguing the region. sky-blue flag of the United Nations— ocean drilling rig during a winter Some more is required: is more a focus of governments storm in the Gulf of Alaska on New 1. An ambitious international and peoples today than ever before. Year’s Eve 2012 underscores the campaign of public awareness and This is partly because of the region’s need for more careful, even skeptical, public diplomacy to better educate abundant resources and its growing international attention rather than peoples and governments around the impact on global climate change. any posture of benign neglect world to the vital stakes involved. The mostly frigid, ice- 2. The U.S. Congress to bound Arctic is warmer sign the International now than it has been in Law of the Seas, first recorded human memory. approved in 1983 and Because of atmospheric signed by 164 countries change, the Arctic Sea’s since, to allow the U.S. temperature is rising, and to protect its sovereign the glaciers and ice packs rights in the area and are melting. The warming gain some “street cred” of the permafrost which for its concern about covers much of the environmental protection. Arctic, is unleashing long-frozen methane 3. United Nations greenhouse gases into support of the Arctic the atmosphere, thus Council to undertake compounding its effect on more rigorous regulations climate change. The mix is a witch’s brew. Private and moral suasion to best companies—oil and gas, mining, balance public interests and private This big sea change—literally and shipping and even tourism—want appetites in figuratively—is helping to trigger to invest more in the region at just the region. increased appetite for the area’s the time that governments and —Crocker Snow Jr., Director, Edward rich natural resources on land and international organizations are more R. Murrow Center for Public Diplomacy, underwater. More than 30 percent aware of the dangers of limited Fletcher School, Tufts University of the world’s untapped mineral oversight. resources, including precious metals, are found in this northern band at The 8-member Arctic Council the top of the world with a total (Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, population of 4 million inhabitants. Iceland, Greenland, Canada, the U.S.) is, more than any organization, in the The warming of the Arctic has a cause- position of doing something about it. and-effect impact on ocean rise and Operating below the radar of most climate change. As snowcaps melt, of the rest of the world, the Arctic previously hidden resources become Council quietly started addressing ever more accessible. Thus the pull for some of the key scientific, political, increased commercial activity. economic, environmental, safety and A Scientist's Portrait of Arctic Amplification Aging the Face of Mother Nature with the Jet Stream It seems as though the weather gods have gone berserk in temperature difference between the Arctic and mid-latitudes recent years, as nearly every day the headlines report unusual is weakening. This is important because the west-to-east winds droughts, floods, prolonged cold and snow, heat waves, of the jet stream are driven by that temperature difference. or unusual weather events happening somewhere around The jet stream is a fast river of wind high in the the globe. According to NOAA’s Climate Extreme Index, an atmosphere that takes on a wavy path as it encircles the accounting of various extreme weather events in the U.S., the northern hemisphere, forming the boundary between warm frequency is clearly on the rise, particularly since the mid-1970s. air to the south and cold air to the north. As its westerly flow The $64B question is: How much of the increase in extreme weakens, the waves in its trajectory tend to take larger north- events can be linked to human-caused climate change? south swings. These waves control weather systems on the Scientists have been reluctant surface: conditions tend to be to weigh in on this question. In Negative Phase Positive Phase clear and dry in the part of the the past few years, however, a (North America & Europe) (North America) wave where winds blow from ir Spills ir Stays ld A Sout ld A Nor Co h Co th flurry of studies have appeared Stronger, Less the northwest, and it’s generally Weaker, Wavier Wavy Jet Stream in peer-reviewed literature Jet Stream stormy where winds come from documenting connections the southwest. between climate change and As the waves increase in size the uptick in extreme weather because of Arctic amplification, Weaker Stronger events. Most of these implicate Tradewinds Tradewinds they progress eastward more W arm rth the rapidly rising concentrations Air Flows No slowly, which means that the Jeff Masters, Wundergound Co. of greenhouse gases in the weather associated lasts longer atmosphere, particularly carbon in any particular location. dioxide, which is now more abundant than it has been in at Larger waves also form “blocks,” which are like back-eddies in least 800,000 years. a stream that tend to prevent the jet-stream waves on either Some impacts are clear. We know that the warmer side—and the weather associated with them—from moving atmosphere contains more energy, which can add fuel to at all. storms and exacerbate droughts and heat waves. As the Blocking Arctic Amplification atmosphere has warmed, the amount of moisture it contains has also increased owing to increased evaporation from Large excursions of the jet stream caused many of the recent warmer oceans and the larger moisture-holding capacity of extreme weather events, such as the unusually cold, snowy warmer air. This additional moisture not only enables storms winters experienced recently in Europe and Alaska, the to produce more rain and snow, but as that water vapor unprecedented flooding in Spain and China, and the record- condenses, heat is released that provides additional energy warm winter during 2011/2012 in the eastern U.S. that can be tapped by weather systems. New research suggests that increased blocking may be connected to Arctic amplification. For example, progressively Superstorm Signs earlier snow melt in northern Siberia, which allows the soil Coastal communities are already feeling the effects of higher to dry out and warm earlier in spring, has been implicated sea levels, as any storm that comes ashore adds surge and in recent summer heat waves and drought in Eurasia. Most high seas to an elevated water level, increasing the likelihood likely the similar snow losses in northern Canada played of flooding. Warmer ocean temperatures contribute to a role in the heat wave and drought in the U.S. during the sea-level rise and also may enable tropical storms to survive summers of 2011 and 2012. The strong high-pressure block farther away from the tropics and lengthen the tropical that was in place over northeast Canada when Sandy tracked storm season. These factors almost certainly contributed up the eastern seaboard helped steer her on her unusual to Superstorm Sandy’s remarkable path of destruction as westward path toward New Jersey. it formed late in the season and tracked up the eastern The shifting patterns are sketching out the portrait of seaboard where ocean temperatures were abnormally warm. climate change that models have projected for years. Mother Recent research has revealed some less intuitive links Nature’s face is not aging slowly or gracefully, the wrinkles between climate change and the escalation of extreme and scars caused by accumulating greenhouse gases are weather. The Arctic is warming two to three times faster than already visible. The good news? Extreme weather is also the rest of the northern hemisphere owing primarily to sea-ice chiseling fissures and gaping holes in the climate deniers’ loss, earlier snow melt on Arctic land in spring, and an increase bunker, leaving a crumbling foundation for their arguments. in the northward transport of moisture into the Arctic. —Jennifer Francis, Research Professor and co-founder of This so-called Arctic amplification means that the Rutgers Climate and Environmental Change Department 2 Two Arctic Observers Cited with IPCC in 2007 Nobel Prize Change "Pollution-Control" to "Clean-Development" Treaty The Arctic is melting because of actions taken in the rest economic development. The problem is not the emissions—it of the world where most people live and which generate is our underlying model of unsustainable development that the heat trapping gases and black carbon that is causing is built upon the heavy reliance on fossil fuels as the energy the problem. Just over 20 years ago, the world agreed to a source of our economy. So it is not in any nation’s interest process to address the heat-trapping gases being added to agree to emission reductions—even though this would to the atmosphere, and by 2005 was implementing the address climate change, which is surely in the interest of Kyoto Protocol that required industrial nations to begin all nations. So I propose shifting from burden-bearing to slowly reducing their emissions by the end of 2012. The opportunity-sharing. People want and need energy services U.S. did not join, Australia joined late and Canada has just such as light, heat, computer and entertainment services and pulled out of the treaty system. Despite this, the modest mobility. They do not want “energy” or carbon dioxide from goal was met by the rest of the developed countries, the burning of fossil fuels. So I propose a mutual gains strategy yet concentrations of carbon dioxide and most other of providing energy services for all in the most efficient, clean heat-trapping gases have continued to grow, and the manner possible.

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