The Arctic in your back yard
Arctic warming affects us all – it can cause extreme global weather changes, widespread flooding and big increases in greenhouse gas emission that will in turn make global warming even worse. That’s the message of WWF’s new short film, The Arctic in your back yard – watch the video here.
We’ve also just published a new report called Arctic Climate Feedbacks: Global Implications, which lists dire global consequences of a warming Arctic – far worse than previous projections.
This unprecedented peer-reviewed report brings together top climate scientists who have assessed the current data on Arctic warming.
“They found a truly sobering picture,” says Dr. Martin Sommerkorn, senior climate change advisor for WWF’s Arctic programme. “Simply put, if we don’t keep the Arctic cold enough, people across the world will suffer the effects.”
The report shows that numerous Arctic climate feedbacks – negative effects prompted by the impacts of warming – will make global climate change more severe than indicated by other recent projections, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 assessment.
The dramatic loss of sea ice – a result of the Arctic warming at about twice the rate of the rest of the world – will influence atmospheric circulation and weather in the Arctic and beyond. This is projected to change temperature and rainfall patterns in Europe and North America, affecting agriculture, forestry and water supplies.
In addition, the Arctic’s frozen soils and wetlands store twice as much carbon as is in the atmosphere. As the soils thaw they release lots of this extra carbon, as carbon dioxide and methane. Levels of atmospheric methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas, have been increasing for the past two years, and it’s been suggested this is from warming Arctic tundra.
This is the first assessment to take full account of the fate of the ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica into global sea level projections.
It concludes that sea levels will very likely rise by more than one metre by 2100 – more than twice the amount given in the IPCC’s 2007 report (which excluded the ice sheets).
The associated flooding of coastal regions will affect more than a quarter of the world’s population.
You can…
- read our Climate Feedbacks report
- read our Copenhagen climate treaty blueprint
- Vote Earth - for a global climate deal
Newsletter sign-up
Sign-up to get the latest WWF news delivered straight to your in-box.
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter