From Crisis to Resilience in the Arctic

When Rick Thoman and Brian Brettschneider get alarmed, I freak out. Rick and Brian are climate experts in Alaska, and they know of what they speak. I follow them religiously on Twitter because their reports on temperature anomalies and weather aberrations in the Arctic say more about the pace of global warming than any other source, and they use great graphs and maps. I've never met them in person, but I can tell that they're getting concerned, and they should be.

With every new report about warming trends and winter heat waves, they are adding to a body of knowledge that maps out a dramatic transformation of the Arctic as it warms at two to three times the rate of the rest of the planet. Their maps show deep maroon blotches of abnormal warmth over the Bering and Chukchi seas in February and the shockingly small expanse of winter sea ice as it reaches its seasonal maximum in the dead of winter. In the "lower 48" states, we hear about heat extremes during the summer months, but in the Arctic the most alarming temperature extremes are in the winter — and they are definitely not on the cold end of the thermometer where they should be....