Arctic News: How to respond to the threat of a huge temperature rise

Wednesday, March 5, 2025

How to respond to the threat of a huge temperature rise

The above image illustrates the threat of a huge temperature rise. The red trendline warns that the temperature could increase at a terrifying speed soon.

At first glance, the data appear to disagree with such a rise, temperature anomalies even appear to have come down recently. However, a closer look shows the shading in the image, which illustrates the difference between El Niño conditions (pink shading) and La Niña conditions (blue shading). An El Niño pushes up temperatures, whereas La Niña suppresses temperatures. We're currently in a La Niña, so temperatures are suppressed, but this is predicted to end soon.

NOAA predicts a transition away from La Niña to occur next month, as illustrated by the image below.

Later this year, a new El Niño may emerge, which could push up the temperature. Importantly, this is only one out of ten mechanisms that could jointly push up the temperature dramatically in a matter of months, as described in a previous post.

[ Arctic sea ice volume, click to enlarge ]

Another one of these mechanisms is sea ice loss. The image on the right shows that Arctic sea ice volume is at a record low for the time of year.

Some may question whether a huge temperature will occur. Others may question that these mechanisms will cause a huge temperature soon. They all miss the point. The point is that a huge rise may occur soon and that politicians are taking little or no action.

As the likeliness of a huge and accelerating temperature rise, the severity of its impact, and the ubiquity and the imminence with which it will strike all become more manifest—the more sobering it is to realize that a mere 3°C rise may suffice to cause human extinction.

A state of emergency is typically declared only after a disaster hits a specific area. Increasingly though, we must not only look at the intensity and severity at which one specific place is hit by an event, but we must also incorporate ubiquity and imminence. As temperatures rise, more extreme weather events will occur with greater intensity, more frequently, over larger areas, with longer duration and they will become more ubiquitous and follow each other up with increasing rapidity.

Climate Emergency Declaration

The situation is dire and the precautionary principle calls for rapid, comprehensive and effective action to reduce the damage and to improve the situation, as described in this 2022 post, where needed in combination with a Climate Emergency Declaration, as discussed at this group.