Heat waves, downpours and intense episodes of melting ice all used to be rare in the Arctic. Now, they’re happening at breakneck speed, according to scientists who say it signals a transition to a new climate state.
That’s the finding of a comprehensive new review of Arctic science published Monday in the research journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.
Authored by three dozen scientists around the world, the study examined decades of research on the Arctic’s temperatures, precipitation patterns, ocean heat and sea ice cover, as well as the vast Greenland ice sheet. Climate change has pushed all of these elements into new phases, the study said, with extreme events happening more frequently since the year 2000.
The research defined extreme events using a statistical metric known as a standard deviation — a mathematical calculation showing how far a data point strays from the average. In this case, the scientists looked at events that were one or more standard deviations from the norm.
