Heat wave at the North Pole at Christmas

Temperatures at the North Pole were up to 20 degrees higher than average this Christmas Eve, in what scientists say is a record-breaking heatwave. Climate scientists say these unseasonably warm weather patterns in the Arctic region are directly linked to man-made climate change.
Temperatures throughout November and December were 5C higher than average.
It follows a summer during which Arctic sea ice reached the second-lowest extent ever recorded by satellites.

 Arctic sea ice extent is monitored and measured by satellite imaging

Dr Friederike Otto, a senior researcher at Oxford's Environmental Change Institute said that in pre-industrial times "a heatwave like this would have been extremely rare - we would expect it to occur about every 1,000 years".
Dr Otto added that scientists are "very confident" that the weather patterns were linked to anthropogenic climate change.
"We have used several different climate modelling approaches and observations," she said
"And in all our methods, we find the same thing; we cannot model a heatwave like this without the anthropogenic signal."

Temperatures  forecast to peak on Christmas Eve around the North Pole - at just below freezing.  Below freezing at the North Pole, "Geez Louise"!! The warm air from the North Atlantic is forecast to flow all the way to the North Pole, giving rise to clouds that prevent heat from escaping. And, as Dr Otto explained, the reduction in sea ice is contributing to this "feedback loop".
"If the globe is warming, then the sea ice and ice on land [shrinks] then the darker water and land is exposed," she said.
"Then the sunlight is absorbed rather than reflected as it would be by the ice."

Forecasting models show that there is about a 2% chance of a heatwave event occurring every year in the future. We are talking about a heatwave at the North Pole folks. Do you think the Chinese invented that??
"But if temperatures continue to increase further as they are now," said Dr Otto, "we would expect a heatwave like this to occur every other year and that will be a huge stress on the ecosystem."

Dr Thorsten Markus, chief of NASA's Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory, said the heatwave was "very, very unusual" and a harbinger of worse things to come.
"The eerie thing is that we saw something similar (temperatures at the North Pole of about 0C in December) exactly a year ago" .
The constant freeze and thaw conditions are already making it difficult for reindeer to find food - as the moss they feed on is covered by hard ice, rather than soft, penetrable snow.  All foraging animals in the Arctic are suffering. And the loss of  off shore pack ice is racing the polar bears to their extinction.

We don't know how Santa dealt with these new conditions, but for sure he was
overdressed. Maybe next year we'll see him in a hoodie or plastic raincoat.