Arctic Heat

The Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet. Tero Mustonen, recently back from the Arctic, offers a firsthand debrief.

That the Arctic is warming is not exactly breaking news on a planet where almost everywhere is warming. But it is critical news that the Arctic is warming almost four times faster than the rest of the globe since the polar regions are essentially the planet’s air conditioners. Last year's Arctic Report Card documented that 2023 was the Arctic's hottest summer in centuries, with all the attendant consequences: massive wildfires, late June Greenland ice sheet melt, sea surface temperatures 7ºC above normal, etc.

The list of firsts, or maybe better put, worst was a long one—and the early evidence is that those were trends, not anomalies, that continue in 2024.

Are we as a planet now locked into ever more warming? Are there potential tipping points that might produce even faster change? Are there actions that can be taken on a timescale that's relevant to people living today?

Even if the answers are "Yes, Yes, No" are there initiatives at scale that are worth pursuing if only to adapt to the massive changes clearly underway? If that question elicits even a tentative "Yes", then the places to start are at the epicenters: the Arctic and Antarctica.

Tero Mustonen— Finnish environmental leader, scientist, fisherman and past recipient of the Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize—is spending his life working to make that last “Yes” more muscular. More immediately, he recently returned from traveling across the Arctic, which gives us a rare opportunity for a firsthand debrief.

Please tell us what you think.

In the podcast, Tero mentioned arcticseas.org where you can hear the authentic voices of hunters, women, and fishers from Arctic villages as they share their knowledge, often for the first time. These communities, living sustainably in one of the planet's toughest environments, offer vital messages about coexisting with nature.