Recent Climate Patterns in the Arctic

Abstract

During the course of the past century, there has been an overall increase in global temperature of some 0.5°C. This is fairly uniformly reflected in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, as is the temporal pattern of temperature change. Thus, in the Northern Hemisphere, the coolest period of the past 100 years occurred in the early part of the 20th century; this was followed by a fairly abrupt warming during the 1920s, which culminated around 1940. Cooling occurred thereafter until the early 1970s, followed by another abrupt warming into the 1980s. The past decade has, in fact, been the warmest of the past 100 years with the five warmest individual years having been recorded during it.KeywordsSnow CoverSnow Cover ExtentSeasonal Snow CoverAbrupt WarmingDecrease DecreaseThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.