The Arctic region is the area around the North Pole, essentially an ocean surrounded by land. In the far north, Arctic is mostly covered by snow and ice, whereas boreal forests cover the southernmost part. The Arctic is home to an array of plants, animals and people that survive in some of the most extreme conditions on the planet and that are uniquely adopted to such conditions. The Arctic includes Greenland, Iceland, and the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Canada, Russia, and the United States.
The Arctic climate is now warming rapidly and much larger changes are projected. Records of increasing temperatures, melting glaciers, sea ice and permafrost and rising sea levels, clearly …show more content…
This Arctic climate change have an impact on animals, vegetation, settlements and infrastructures, people and environment, and on almost on the entire world.
The change in the Arctic climate will have an impact on the global climate. Shiny ice and snow reflect a high proportion of the sun’s energy into space. So, as the Arctic loses snow and ice, bare rock and water absorb more and more of the sun’s energy, making it ever warmer. This leads to acceleration in the overall rate of global warming.
Due to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the world’s oceans are 30% more acidic now than before the industrial revolution. Cold oceans, like those in the Arctic, are acidifying twice as fast as average impacting coral reefs, shellfish and plankton to name a few.
Climate change in the Arctic is expected to impact shipping by opening up new navigable routes. Some of these like the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route would considerably improve connections between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, cutting the price of shipping. Industry (fishing, mining and resource extraction) would be the first to benefit from such developments. The problem is that new weather conditions will increase the presence of icebergs floating around and vessel traffic intensification is likely to have negative counter effects on the marine