What is causing Arctic warming?

For Prelims

Locations of Arctic Region in News

• Barents Sea and Kara Sea which are connected by Kara strait.
• Laptev Sea and Kara Sea are separated by the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago.

About Arctic Region:

• The Arctic region is the north polar region of Earth. Unlike the southern pole, the Arctic region does not have a continental land mass, but is covered with glaciers and icebergs which float over the Arctic Ocean.
• India has a research station named ‘Himadri’ in Ny Alesund, Spitsbergen Island, Norway, which serves as a hub of Indian scientific investigations since 2008

About Arctic Council:

• The Arctic Council is a high-level intergovernmental forum formed by eight countries which have lands within the Arctic Circle. It was created under the Ottawa Declaration of 1996.

The member countries of Arctic Council are;

• Canada; Denmark; Finland; Iceland; Norway; Russia; Sweden; and the United States.
• India has been given observer status in the organisation.

What is polar amplification?

• Polar amplification when any change in the net radiation balance such as greenhouse effect, tends to produce a larger change in temperature near the poles than in the planetary average.

Causes for this amplification:

• The ice-albedo feedback, lapse rate feedback, water vapour feedback and ocean heat transport are the primary causes.

For Mains

The cause for concern:

• In May 2021, the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme had warned that the Arctic has warmed three times faster than the average rise in temperature of the Earth.
• A study by a group of Indian and Norwegian scientists have found that the reduced sea ice in the Barents-Kara Sea region can lead to extreme rainfall events in the latter half of the monsoons, in September and October.
• A Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2019, has said that the “Arctic surface air temperature has likely increased by more than double the global average over the last two decades.”

Source: THE HINDU