Arctic Discovery Shocks Scientists

 

Scientists have just discovered something int he Arctic that could totally change how they see the drastically changing temperatures in the region.

 

This was a disturbing trend, as sea ice normally expands at this time of the year. But with a buoy recently reporting temperatures at the North Pole close to the freezing point of 32 degrees Fahrenheit, talk of an Arctic heatwave has experts concerned about the impact of climate change on the area.

 

Climate change may be rearing its ugly head again in the North Pole, as an Arctic heatwave has caused temperatures to rise tens of degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average.

 

Although it isn't clear yet, we could now be in for another period when sea ice either pauses its spread across the Arctic ocean, or reverses course entirely, says a report in the Independent.

 

But these bursts of Arctic warmth don't stand alone -- last month, extremely warm North Pole temperatures corresponded with extremely cold temperatures over Siberia. This week, meanwhile, there are large bursts of un-seasonally cold air over Alaska and Siberia once again.

 

Since the National Snow and Ice Data Center started publishing data in October 1978, there have been only six other three-day periods during the winter months where the Arctic ice is supposed to grow that have seen a more rapid of a decline in ice. The last was in January, 2012.

 

Human-caused climate change is being held responsible for the warmest winter on record so-far at the North Pole.

 

Dr Friederike Otto, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford's Environmental Change Institute, said they were "very confident" the warming was a result of human action.

 

"We have used several different climate modelling approaches and observations ... and in all our model, we find the same thing; we cannot model a heatwave like this without the anthropogenic signal," she told BBC News.