PLEA Network

2 March 2018, The Conversation, The freak warm Arctic weather is unusual, but getting less so. The Arctic has been unusually warm since the beginning of 2018. In the past week air temperatures have hovered around 20℃ above normal or even higher. On February 25, the Cape Morris Jesup weather station in northern Greenland recorded 6.1℃, despite the fact that at this time of year, when the sun is still below the horizon, temperatures are typically around -30℃.  surprising feature of this warming event was how far into (and beyond) the Arctic it has penetrated. Warm air migrated north from the Atlantic Ocean, over the North Pole and towards the Pacific Ocean, bringing above-freezing air temperatures to large areas of the Arctic Ocean for more than 24 hours. We have not seen a warm intrusion from the Atlantic Ocean on this scale since at least 1980. Is this unprecedented? Warm events in the middle of the northern winter are not unheard of. Large winter storms can bring strong winds that pump warm air into the Arctic from lower latitudes. For example, during the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen’s 1896 expedition aboard the icebreaker Fram, the crew observed temperatures of -3℃ on one midwinter’s day. More recently, in December 2015, an Arctic warming event brought temperatures of 2℃ to the North Pole, and the warm weather continued into early 2016. Read More here