Arctic endured one of its hottest years in 2020

WASHINGTON: Every year for the past 15, environmental scientists working under the aegis of a US government agency issue a report on the state of the Arctic, and Tuesday’s edition confirms an alarming trend: the North Pole is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the planet.

The year 2020 did not beat the record set in 2012, but it got so close there is no reason to feel encouraged. The sea ice floating the Arctic ocean melts in summer and freezes again in winter. The problem is each year it is melting a bit more in the warm weather and refreezing a bit less. Scientists now get reliable data as satellites have been photographing and measuring the Arctic non-stop since 1979.

And there is no room for doubt about the region’s melting pattern. 2020’s late summer thaw was the second worst year on record after 2012: compared to its highest historical level, half of the sea ice is now gone.

The report released on Tuesday, called the Arctic Report Card 2020 and published by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, provides a wealth of information that illustrate the complexity of the Arctic climate system. The climate in the rest of the world -- wind and currents -- affects what happens at the North Pole.