A big swath of Siberia has been way, way warmer than normal this year. Through May 2020, temperatures in the region averaged about 13 degrees Fahrenheit, or 7 degrees Celsius, above average, with some places experiencing record warmth during this period.
The conspicuous warm spot — seen on climate maps produced by NASA, NOAA, and other agencies — has had quite a run. During each of the past five months, temperatures in this region were much higher than average.
“That’s rather remarkable,” Flavio Lehner, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told Mashable.
This exceptional event is a consequence of warmer weather amplified by human-caused climate change.
“We have an overall warming trend which is primarily a response to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere,” Anthony Broccoli, a climate scientist at Rutgers University, told Mashable. And on top of these rising background temperatures, he added, there is the normal variability in weather, which this year has turned out to be quite warm over Siberia.
Although the planet is now relentlessly heating (19 of the last 20 years have been the warmest on record) and Arctic regions are some of the fastest changing areas on the planet, a majority of Siberia’s warming this year likely came from milder or warmer than usual weather. Lehner, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, estimated that of the 7 degrees C of above average temperatures in Siberia this year, between 2 to 2.3 C came from human-caused warming of the planet. So climate change certainly had a strong influence, but not quite as robust as the weather.
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What were these warmer weather systems? For one, there was an exceptionally strong polar vortex — a whirling jet of air that forms over the Arctic — this winter. This kept frigid air mostly locked up north instead of wobbling around and spilling air southward (for example, 2020's potent polar vortex largely resulted in the East Coast’s wimpy winter). Snow cover has been below average over vast swathes of Siberia this winter and spring, too. And overall, relatively warmer masses of air have continuously settled over Siberia this spring, rather than cooler ones. That’s just how weather can naturally work. “These warm patches and cold patches move around from month to month,” said Rutgers’ Broccoli.
But although different weather patterns come and go, the big picture is clear. Warmer weather events are getting warmer, because humans are heating the planet. That’s why high-temperature records are now dominating low-temperature records. To illustrate, 364 all-time high temperatures were set in 2019, versus just 70 all-time lows.
“Any place is more likely to be warmer than it was 50 years ago than colder,” said Broccoli.
The extreme warming trend in Siberia has resulted in melting permafrost, which is ground that usually stays frozen. This caused a tank holding 20,000 gallons of diesel fuel to collapse into a Russian river. It’s now a historic oil spill in the Arctic region.
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The great splotch over Siberia is a potential preview of our warming world. If carbon dioxide were to continue amassing in the atmosphere, the planet could heat up by some 3 C (or more) this century, compared to pre-Industrial Revolution levels. As Mashable reported earlier this year, that would have catastrophic implications for the planet. (Earth has already warmed by a little over 1 C.)
“This event provides a glimpse into a future we’re trying to avoid,” said the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Lehner.
Much of the world has been warmer than average in 2020, though not as remarkably as Siberia. Still, places like the tropics, which have seen warmer than normal temperatures this year, make up a much bigger part of Earth than Siberia — so this can add a lot more planetary warming. “That’s contributing a great deal toward the global temperature anomaly,” said Broccoli.
NOAA currently predicts an over 80 percent chance that 2020 will go down as either the first or second warmest year on record.
