The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme recently published a report on Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic, which asses the state of the Arctic and the projected impact climate change will have on this part of the world. Most importantly, this report confirms a shift that scientists have feared for years: that the Arctic’s climate will be significantly transformed to one that is warmer, wetter, and more variable. Already temperatures are rising faster than the global average: several months out of the year are already 5°C higher than the average of the past several decades. Ice sheets and glaciers are becoming smaller and younger, and summer sea ice may disappear altogether as early as a couple decades from now. Perhaps more worryingly, increases in Arctic temperatures are causing greater levels of permafrost thaw in northern latitudes, thereby releasing carbon that has previously been locked away in this frozen soil into our atmosphere.

Of course, the effects of climate change are not limited to differing weather patterns, as we know from the heart-wrenching images of polar bears on dwindling sea ice. Polar bears spend most their lives on sea ice – it’s where they hunt, seeks mates, raise their young, and den – so there is no doubt that a loss of sea ice would have a dramatic effect on their livelihoods. And as we know, everything in nature is connected. The polar bear is the apex predator in the Arctic, and meaning that when their population declines, the entire food web could fall out of balance.