Climate of The Arctic - Climate Change

Climate Change

As with the rest of the planet, the climate in the Arctic has changed throughout time. About 55 million years ago it is thought that parts of the Arctic supported subtropical ecosystems (Serreze and Barry 2005) and that Arctic sea-surface temperatures rose to about 23 °C (73 °F) during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum. In the more recent past, the planet has experienced a series of ice ages and interglacial periods over about the last 2 million years, with the last ice age reaching its maximum extent about 18,000 years ago and ending by about 10,000 years ago. During these ice ages, large areas of northern North America and Eurasia were covered by ice sheets similar to the one found today on Greenland; Arctic climate conditions would have extended much further south, and conditions in the present-day Arctic region were likely colder. Temperature proxies suggest that over the last 8000 years the climate has been stable, with globally averaged temperature variations of less than about 1 °C (2 °F; see Paleoclimate).