Arctic Ocean Climate Change

Global warming and climate change exist and the two have called for a world attention to reduce their impacts. The Great 8 nations, including U.S., have convened various global summits where heads of states come to debate how to counter the increased climate change. Various recommendations have been proposed to counter the effects of climate change and device ways in which the change can be accommodated. This paper will discuss the rhetorical questions asked by the author in the journal article. In addition, the paper will attempt to answer some of the questions posed by Eric Klinenberg, the author of Adaption.

The polar ice and climate change is not only affecting the arctic, but it is affecting the human race, too. The ice melting as we all know, but what we don’t know is what is the after affect of ice melting. While the ice is melting it thins out and that causes the ice to spread. The ice has gone through Russia and now to Canada in four- five years. This distance of ice spreading used to take six-seven years. This means the ice is now melting more pushing the other ice faster! What some people may not know is that as the ice moves it carries pollution, and when it is spring and summer all the ice melts and pollution goes into the ocean.

As Earths average temperature increases every year, the discussion of climate change has become a significant topic in the scientific community. Human activities such as powering factories, running automobiles or something as simple as burning wood for heat, emit dangerous greenhouse gases. What makes these greenhouse gases so detrimental is that they absorb the heat radiating off of Earth and keep it in the lower atmosphere creating a “blanket” of warmth around the Earth’s surface. This causes a drastic increase in the Earths average temperature. Due to the rise in temperature, the polar caps have been melting faster than ever, this is dangerous not only because of the risk of floods and sea level increase but ocean water will become less saline and ecosystems will be destroyed, impacting humans just as much as marine life. In the article, Understand faulty thinking to tackle climate change by George Marshall, Marshall states that most people in our world today do not care about climate change because it will not affect them, “Which points to the real problem: climate change is exceptionally amorphous, … no deadlines, no geographic location, no single cause or solution.” (Marshall 2014). Because the author makes it clear that climate change is indeed a great plight, and fails to be acknowledged by people, it is a significant matter that should be discussed

Forests control the amounts of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere therefore contributing to global warming. However we as a planet have a problem… deforestation.

Humans have been interacting with the Arctic tundra for centuries now. They have used the land to explore and race, for example, the infamous race between Admunsen and Scott to the South pole. However, the human civilisation on the Arctic tundra have had their implications, both severe and light. Humans have slaughtered whales and seals since very early days, for food as well as commercial and self-profiting purposes. The most recent and paramount problem is global warming and pollution, which is harming the Arctic Tundra far more than the sealing and whaling ever did.

1). While the growth of the Arctic discourse is now around the world, only a few countries are eager to act upon these events. The group is known as the ‘Arctic Five’, and the countries include the US, Canada, Denmark, Russia, and Norway. However, instead of these particular countries spending their efforts on saving the Arctic from a land with no ice, their efforts are on making the Arctic the next region to extract oil and other precious materials. Instead, to prevent the possible catastrophe of the Arctic without ice, the money should be funded into programs to eliminate main triggers of the Arctic’s melt, like preventing the build-up of gases in the atmosphere and limiting greenhouse

Scientists say that the melting of Arctic ice and ice caps are harmful to essential life of arctic animals like polar bears because they live on Arctic ice and ice caps (Rinkesh). Research has proven both of these theories wrong. The Arctic ice and ice caps have increased and are still increasing. Since 2012, the Arctic ice and ice caps have increased in volume by fifty percent (Foley). There are over twenty thousand polar bears in the world and over sixty percent of these polar bears live in Canada (Matishov). The population of polar bears is increasing and staying at a stable rate, depending on their location (Global Warming and Polar Bears). Since, both of these theories have been proven wrong, we do not believe that “global warming” is affecting the Arctic ice or Arctic

In order to provide context for the recent decline of ice in the sea, it is imperative to understand how the sea ice has varied over the past two centuries. Of particular interest, the period around 1920-1940 showed an “increase in almost twice the global average rate in past 100 years. [ ]” The warming during this time can be used to compare the decline of sea ice observed since 1979, but what will also be discussed is how this time period was also quite controversial due to its substantial variance between the official views and views held by other people. The reliability of the sea ice observations during the first half of the 20th century according to some people cannot provide certainty to estimating

In the Ian Eisenman, Tapio Schneider, Davis Battisti, and Cecilia Bitz’s article “Consistent Changes in the Sea Ice Seasonal Cycle in Response to Global Warming”, published in Journal of Climate, authors describes and illustrates how global warming affect arctic ice. Authors explain that even though, changes in distribution in ice on both hemispheres of earth looks different it is only due to geological factors. However, in conclusion, the rate of withdrawal of the ice is drastic on both hemispheres, and it is mostly due to global warming.

Sea ice has significant importance in the northern Arctic. The sea ice is extremely vital for the marine animals that live in this ecosystem. In particular the sea ice allows them to hunt, mate, and travel. The sea ice allows animals such as polar bears to hunt and search for their prey that lives underwater. It helps females and males find mates to grow their population, and lastly the sea ice allows for polar bears to travel from different locations. Another reason for the importance of sea ice is that it helps keep our planet cool particularly through the albedo effect (Kaitlin, 2016). Potential consequences of the melting of the sea ice could have devastating effects of marine animals in the north, and also for our entire planet because

“An acceleration of these climatic trends is projected to occur during this century, due to ongoing increases in concentrations of green houses gases in global atmosphere. While green house gas emissions do not primarily originate in the arctic, they are projected to bring wide-range changes and impacts to arctic. These arctic changes will, in turn, impact the planet as a whole. For this reason, people outside the arctic have a great stake in what is happening there. For example, climatic processes unique to the arctic have significant effects on global and regional climate. The arctic also provides important natural resources to the rest of the world (such as oil, gas, and fish) that will be affected by climate change. And melting of arctic

Spectacularly diverse and unique, the Arctic is home to a population of approximately four million people and 21,000 different species! Climate change is by far the greatest threat on the spectacularly unique biodiversity that the Arctic has to offer according to the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment (ABA) with research done by over 200 scientists from 15 countries. The Arctic in particular is expected to be negatively affected by global warming. The globally agreed upon, sustainable increase in temperature is by 2 °C. The Arctic is expected to become significantly warmer with a predicted 2.8-7.8°C rise in temperature within this next century. Extreme changes such as this are likely to have devastating effects on Arctic biodiversity due to the

2.1 Mercury in the Arctic marine environments: As there are practically no point sources of industrial Hg close to the Arctic environment, the main source of Hg is from long range atmospheric transport (from lower latitude) particularly from Asia, Europe and North American emissions and other geologic sources (Braune et al., 1991). Despite significant Hg coming to the Arctic through long range atmospheric transport, the riverine (i.e., terrestrial runoff) and costal erosion or thawing permafrost input the same order of magnitude of Hg in Arctic marine waters or even higher than the atmospheric depositional flux (AMAP, 2005; Outridge et al., 2008; Fisher et al., 2012). Gaseous elemental mercury (GEM) (Hg0), reactive gaseous mercury (RGM, Hg2+) and methylmercury (MeHg) (organometallic) are the

The Arctic has huge oil and gas reserves. Most are located in Russia: oil in the Pechora Basin, gas in the lower Ob Basin, and other potential oil and gas fields along the Siberian coast. Canadian oil and gas fields are concentrated in two main basins in the Mackenzie Delta/ Beaufort Sea region and in the Arctic Islands. In Alaska, Prudhoe Bay is the largest oil field in North America 16 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment and other fields have been discovered or remain to be discovered along the Beaufort Sea coast. Oil and gas fields also exist on Greenland’s west coast and in Norway’s arctic territories.

As the impact of global warming on the environment exponentially expands, issues such as increasing air and water temperatures, rising water levels in coastal regions, growing severity of storms, polar ice melting, increased acidity in oceans, and altered environments and habitats also worsen at an alarming rate (Denshak). These are not unknown concepts, but what is less known is the effect that global warming has on the Arctic region and its biodiversity. This specific issue primarily deals with climate change in the scheme of melting polar ice shelves, rising temperatures, and increased acidity of the world’s oceans. Since the Arctic region has a very different, more fragile