Four male polar bears standing on a floating whale carcass shortly after it drifted to shore on the island of Svalbard.
Daniel J. Cox/Arctic Documentary Project
Four male polar bears standing on a floating whale carcass shortly after it drifted to shore on the island of Svalbard.

With 2019 on pace as one of the warmest years on record, a new international study reveals how rapidly the Arctic is warming and examines global consequences of continued polar warming.

The study, published Dec. 4 in the journal Science Advances, reports that the Arctic has warmed by 0.75 degrees C in the last decade alone. By comparison, the Earth as a whole has warmed by nearly the same amount, 0.8 C, over the past 137 years.

The comprehensive report represents the efforts of an international team of 15 authors, including Kristin Laidre at the University of Washington, who specialize in an array of disciplines, including the life, Earth, social and political sciences. They documented widespread effects of warming in the Arctic and Antarctic on wildlife, traditional human livelihoods, tundra vegetation, methane release, and loss of sea- and land-ice.

“What’s happening in the Arctic is profound and unprecedented,” said Laidre, a UW research scientist at the Polar Science Center and associate professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. “Marine mammals rely on the sea ice platform for most aspects of their life and it is rapidly disappearing. This has cascading impacts on the ecosystem, species interactions, and indigenous humans who rely on these animals for nutritional, cultural and economic purposes.”

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