The World Climate Organization (WMO) recently finalized a new Arctic temperature record: inside the Arctic Circle, on June 20, 2020, the temperature in the Russian town of Verkhoyonsk reached 38 degrees.
On the 15th, WMO spokesman Nulis confirmed that the Arctic is one of the fastest warming regions in the world, and its heating rate is more than twice the global average.
WMO Secretary-General Taras said the data is a wake-up call for climate change. In 2020, the Antarctic continent also set a new temperature record of 18.3 degrees.
Currently, WMO investigators are verifying temperature readings of 54.4°C recorded in Death Valley, California, the world's hottest place in 2020 and 2021, and are verifying a newly reported European temperature record of 48.8°C in Sicily, Italy, this summer. Never before has the WMO Weather and Climate Extremes Archive been conducted at the same time. Taras said.
A senior person in the field of environmental protection of an international organization told the first financial reporter that due to the record concentration of greenhouse gases and related accumulated heat, the characterization of global climate change is rainfall, drought and flood are actually directly related to rainfall, including the recent tornado in the United States, which is the time, space and intensity of rainfall, which is the core problem.
High temperatures are measured in the Siberian Arctic in summer
Located about 115 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, Verkhoyonsk has been making temperature observations since 1885. The region is a region of Eastern Siberia with an extremely dry continental climate, i.e. extremely cold in winters and hot summers.
During an unusual, prolonged Siberian heatwave, the meteorological observatory measured a temperature of 38 degrees, more suitable for the Mediterranean than in the Arctic, WMO said. For much of last summer, the average temperature in the Siberian Arctic was 10 degrees Celsius above normal, fueling devastating fires, causing massive loss of sea ice and playing a major role in 2020 as one of the three warmest years on record, the data showed.
According to historical studies recorded by countries in the Arctic, there have been no temperatures above 38 degrees in the Arctic. After a rigorous analysis, the Committee came to the specific conclusion that previous observations in Canada did not exceed this value.
Even, in the context of extreme temperatures and persistent climate change, the WMO expert group has added a new climate category to its Archive of International Weather and Climate Extremes – "Records of Maximum Temperatures in the Arctic Circle 66.5 and North of the Arctic Circle".
In general, the Weather and Climate Extremes Archive contains categories such as the highest and lowest global temperatures, rainfall, heaviest hail, longest dry periods, maximum gusts of wind, longest lightning, and weather-related deaths. The creation of this new category means that both polar regions are now covered.
Since 2007, WMO has been listing temperature extremes in antarctica, that is, polar regions at 60 degrees south latitude and south, corresponding to land and ice shelf areas included in the Antarctic Treaty.
"Fundamentally, this survey highlights that an important climate region in the world is heating up. Through continuous monitoring and assessment of extreme temperatures, we can keep abreast of the changes taking place in this important part of the Arctic. Professor Randall Cerveny, WMO Weather and Climate Extremes Rapporteur, said, "This underscores the need to sustain long-term observations and provides us with a baseline for the state of the climate system." ”
More extreme weather may occur in the future
WMO explains that the verified extremums are a "snapshot" of the current climate, as is WMO's assessment of all extremums (e.g., temperature, pressure, wind, etc.). In the future, more extreme weather is likely to occur in the Arctic. Upon the availability of such observations, WMO will establish a new evaluation committee to verify the extreme status of such observations. Given that this is a new climate category in the WMO Archive, the Commission requested that climate data be examined for other comparable extremums that may have previously existed in the Arctic.
In its previous Interim Report on the State of the Global Climate 2021, WMO noted that based on data from the first nine months of 2021, the past seven years are becoming the warmest seven years on record. The "La Niña" event, which had a temporary cooling effect at the beginning of the year, means that 2021 is expected to be "merely" the fifth to seventh warmest year on record. But this does not negate or reverse the long-term trend of rising temperatures.
Global sea level rise has accelerated since 2013, reaching new highs in 2021, while oceans continue to warm and acidify. The main reason for the change in global average sea level is the warming of the oceans caused by the thermal expansion of seawater and the melting of land ice. Since the early 1990s, measurements by high-precision altimeter satellites have shown that global average sea levels rose by 2.1 mm per year between 1993 and 2002 and 4.4 mm per year between 2013 and 2021, doubling between the two periods. This is mainly due to the accelerated loss of ice mass in glaciers and ice sheets.
In fact, mass losses in North American glaciers have accelerated over the past 20 years, nearly doubling between 2015 and 2019 compared to 2000-2004. Western North America experienced an unusually warm, dry summer in 2021, leaving the region's mountain glaciers suffering severe losses.
The melting of the Greenland ice sheet is close to the long-term average in early summer. However, due to the massive intrusion of warm, humid air in mid-August, temperatures and meltwater runoff in August 2021 were much higher than normal.
WMO data shows that on August 14, rainfall lasting several hours was observed at the peak station of the highest point of the Greenland ice sheet (3216 meters), and the temperature remained above the freezing point for about 9 hours. There were no previous reports of rainfall at summit stations. This marks the third melting of the peak in the last 9 years. Ice core records show that there was only one such melting event in the 20th century.
The aforementioned environmental protection veteran explained to the first financial reporter that the changes in the Arctic and Antarctic are related to rainfall. The change of rainfall is caused by changes in the current air flow intensity, cold and hot air flow collision, etc., which is the essence of global meteorological disasters. However, there is currently less research data and it takes several years to accumulate to form.
He explained that although the current research has analyzed many disaster points with particularity, but the real core law has not been summarized, for example, how the global rainfall time, temperature has been adjusted, how the intensity of rainfall will change, etc., there is no clear prediction ability in these aspects, which is related to insufficient data and information, in the future, only when the information is sufficient, countries can make a series of climate adaptation adjustments, including for urban or agricultural adaptation, etc. The idealized way is to improve local material conditions, and the extreme way is to migrate people.