Science Source

Unusually high temperatures at the North Pole, winter 2016

States that in 2016, the North Pole and the surrounding Arctic region saw record-high temperatures in November and December and record-low ice extent
- Mid-November saw an early winter “heat wave” with the temperature on November 11 reaching -7 ºC (19 ºF) – that is 15 ºC (27 ºF) above normal for the time of year
- The monthly mean November temperature was 13 ºC (23 ºF) above normal on the pole
Quantifies how rare the event was by computing the November-December averaged temperature around the North Pole (80–90 ºN) in the ERA-interim reanalysis augmented with the ECMWF analysis and forecast up to December 25 and persistence up to December 31
Reconstructs Arctic temperatures back to about 1900, which clearly shows how the warmth in Nov-Dec 2016 is unprecedented over that period
Finds that a warm event like the one in Nov-Dec 2016 would have been extremely unlikely in the climate of a century ago
- The probability was so small it is hard to estimate, but less than 0.1 percent per year
The model analyses show that the event would also have been extremely unlikely in a world without anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, attributing the cause of the change to human influences
Concludes that if nothing is done to slow climate change, by the time global warming reaches 2 ºC (3.6 ºF) events like this winter would become common at the North Pole, happening every few years