The Arctic is getting hotter, greener and less icy much faster than expected: report

Bitterly cold, frozen and inhospitable to nearly all wildlife apart from polar bears.

This is the image of the Arctic that comes to mind for many. But in a matter of decades – a blink of an eye in the history of this planet – human-caused global warming has transformed the Arctic into a place that scientists say is increasingly unrecognisable.

If the Arctic is a doctor’s patient, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Arctic Report Card is its annual physical – a comprehensive check-up on the health of this vast and important biome.

Today’s Arctic is much hotter, greener and less icy than it was even just 15 years ago, when NOAA published its first Arctic Report Card. And with near-record high surface temperatures and near-record low sea ice observed yet again, the report card released today paints a picture of a region that is warming rapidly, at a pace far outpacing scientists’ expectations, 9News gathered.

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“We thought the changes would take a lot longer, and the models were saying they would,” said James Overland, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, who has been a part of all 15 Arctic Report Cards and co-authored the portion on surface air temperatures in this edition.

“But the rate of change we’ve seen in the last 20 years – and especially the last five years – is beyond what we thought would happen”.