SOURCE: Science by Eric Holthaus
DATE: January 27, 2017
SNIP: Essentially, there has been no winter this year in the Arctic, at least not anything remotely resembling winters of even the recent past.
Mark Serreze, the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, has a good description of the likely culprits. His conclusion: “after studying the Arctic and its climate for three and a half decades, I have concluded that what has happened over the last year goes beyond even the extreme.”
It’s not yet known what the consequences of this will be. The Arctic is changing far faster than most scientists believed was likely, or even possible, just a few years ago.