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.

Mechanisms contributing to a huge acceleration in the temperature rise

At first glance, the data may seem to disagree with such a rise, temperature anomalies even appear to have come down recently. However, a closer look at the shading in the image highlights 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 may push up the temperature dramatically.

Importantly, ENSO is only one out of ten mechanisms that could jointly cause the temperature rise to accelerate dramatically in a matter of months, as described in a previous post and with further details for some of them following below.

[ SSTA and wind, click to enlarge ]

An important mechanism driving up the temperature is rising ocean heat. The image on the right shows a sea surface temperature anomaly of 9.7°C (17.4°F) versus 1981-2011 at the green circle south of Africa on March 5, 2025.

The image also shows the impact of high sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA) on the Jet Stream (250 hPa), with the Jet Stream going circular in two areas with high sea surface temperature anomalies.

These mechanisms interact and can also amplify each other dramatically, in particular rising ocean heat, deformation of the Jet Stream and shrinking sea ice.

[ Arctic sea ice volume, click to enlarge ]

The above image shows that Arctic sea ice area has been at a daily low since the start of February 2025. Importantly, Arctic sea ice volume has been at a record daily low for more than a year, as illustrated by the image on the right.

There has been little to no sunshine over the Arctic over the past few months (Spring has only just started), so rising ocean heat is obviously contributing strongly to this extremely low Arctic sea ice volume.

A recent study lead by Sohail describes how cold, fresh meltwater from Antarctica migrates north, filling the deep ocean as it goes and causing changes to the density structure of the ocean, leading to an overall slowdown in the current.

[ from Sohail et al. (2025) ]

The above image, from the study, depicts how this could lead to reduced Antarctic Bottom Water. One danger is that less ocean heat reaching the seafloor will result in more heat accumulating at the surface and in the atmosphere, as discussed in an earlier post. A weaker current may also allow more warm water to penetrate southwards, and faster ice melting could then lead to further weakening of the current, commencing a vicious spiral of current slowdown, says Taimoor Sohail.

As illustrated by the image below, global sea ice area has been at a record daily low since February 2025. If this situation continues, huge amounts of sunlight that were previously reflected back into space, will instead be absorbed by the surface, and increasingly so on the Northern Hemisphere over the coming months, with the change in seasons.

What to expect

Some may question whether the temperature could rise as high as depicted in the red trendline in the image at the top. Others may question whether such a huge temperature rise could occur this rapidly. They all miss the point. The point is that a huge rise may occur soon and that politicians are taking little to 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, extreme weather events can be expected to occur more frequently and 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 in our response. 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 if not accelerating rapidity.

How to repond

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.