Polar areas hold key to risk control on climate
Print Edition
SCIENTISTS will intensify scrutiny of the polar regions as part of an international campaign to improve global weather predictions and minimize risks linked to rapid climate change, a United Nations body said yesterday.
The World Meteorological Organization said a full year would be dedicated to improving polar forecasting capacities in the Arctic and another year would be spent doing the same in Antarctica.
The polar regions are by far the most impacted by climate change, warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world in some areas and facing rapidly retreating glaciers and sea ice.
But because of their harsh climates, these regions are also the most poorly observed by scientists, impacting the quality of weather forecasts not only for the polar areas but also elsewhere.
WMO chief Petteri Taalas said that “because of teleconnections, the poles influence weather and climate conditions in lower latitudes where hundreds of millions of people live.”
“Warming Arctic air masses and declining sea ice are believed to affect ocean circulation and the jet stream, and are potentially linked to extreme phenomena such as cold spells, heat waves and droughts in the northern hemisphere,” he said in a statement.
From mid-2017 to mid-2019, a large international and interdisciplinary network of scientists and forecasting centers will carry out intensive observation and modelling in the Arctic and Antarctic, the WMO said, adding that better forecasts of weather and sea-ice conditions would also “reduce future risks.”
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