Climate change is supposed to unfold slowly, over decades. But that is not true up in the great white north, as those attending the aaas meeting's session on climate change in the Arctic were reminded. Temperatures there are 2℃ higher than their long-term average (around twice the increase in the rest of the world), and the upper layers of parts of the Arctic Ocean are hotter than they have been for at least 2,000 years. Summer sea ice has been vanishing faster than even the gloomiest researchers thought likely, with some now predicting the first completely ice-free summer as soon as the 2020s.
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