Mika Rantanen, Alexey Yu. Karpechko, Antti Lipponen
Kalle Nordling, Otto Hyvärinen, Kimmo Ruosteenoja, Timo Vihma, Ari Laaksonen
2022 · Communications Earth & Environment
Abstract In recent decades, the warming in the Arctic has been much faster than in the rest of the world, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. Numerous studies report that the Arctic is warming either twice, more than twice, or even three times as fast as the globe on average. Here we show, by using several observational datasets which cover the Arctic region, that during the last 43 years the Arctic has been warming nearly four times faster than the globe, which is a higher ratio than generally reported in literature. We compared the observed Arctic amplification ratio with the ratio simulated by state-of-the-art climate models, and found that the observed four-fold warming ratio over 1979–2021 is an extremely rare occasion in the climate model simulations. The observed and simulated amplification ratios are more consistent with each other if calculated over a longer period; however the comparison is obscured by observational uncertainties before 1979. Our results indicate that the recent four-fold Arctic warming ratio is either an extremely unlikely event, or the climate models systematically tend to underestimate the amplification.
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This is really not as definitive as you claim, although it is a popular talking point. Polar amplification of warming is well-understood, that's where the greatest temperature swings will take place, and that's going to impact Europe, North America, Japan, Russia, etc. heavily. Nobody is going to escape the consequences, it's planet-wide. Aug 2022 "The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the globe since 1979" https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00498-3
> Renewable energy is growing faster than expected, and population growth is slowing faster than expected It will be decades before we can see the results of those actions. > We do not appear to be on track to meet worst cases scenarios from the IPCC The worst as in reaching +5ºC on average around 2100? Maybe not, but we're 100% going to shoot beyond +2ºC global avg in the coming decades. But it gets worse. Europe is warming at 2x the global avg. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/02/europes-... The Arctic is warming 4x the global avg. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00498-3 The Arctic has a huge influence on the climate of Europe and NA. Also the warming will trigger climatic feedbacks (arctic ice, methane, etc) if that hasn't happened already. There's no human way to stop feedbacks. It's like trying to stop an earthquake. Etc. So yeah, things are looking pretty dire.
Yeah, the original title "The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the globe since 1979" (https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00498-3, which another commenter mentioned) makes much more sense. You could actually compare the rates at which Arctic glaciers and glaciers in other parts of the world are receding, but I doubt it's four times faster?!
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