FAQ: Your Climate Questions Answered

It’s a business risk that’s coming from the Poles. Climate change is an expensive material risk for companies. in terms of agriculture, supply chains, water security and real estate in coastal communities, to name a few. It is a business risk that’s coming from the poles.

Carbon budgets are critical tools for climate action, guiding the ambition and urgency of action to cut emissions, but still neglect the 30-150 billion tonnes of carbon expected to be released from permafrost this century.

Action to take now: Global action needs to happen NOW!

Global warming in the Arctic is expensive. Estimates of global socio-economic and ecological impacts linked with Arctic warming put a price tag of billions of dollars per year leading to the 2050 net-zero target.

Polar change – now and in the future – translates into extreme pressure on food and water security in the rest of the world, heat stress in cities and climate vulnerable regions, more extreme weather, and supply chain disruption. Since a growing body of research connects warming at the poles with cold spells, super storms, hurricanes, cyclones, droughts, fires and

The North and South Poles help regulate the world’s climate and weather. However, they are in crisis as they are warming faster than the rest of the world. The polar regions are the control centre for our climate system. They help regulate the world’s climate, influencing the Earth’s atmospheric and oceanographic circulation systems. In other words, what happens in the

Zombie fires are a rare phenomenon that occurs in the Arctic where fires smolder under extreme cold conditions. They re-emerge as temperatures begin warm. These fires release methane and other carbon emissions once exposed to the surface.

Wildfires in Siberia burned six million hectares (about the size of Lithuania) and released 800 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2021, which is approximately equivalent to the yearly emissions of Germany.

Local conditions, including vegetation cover, are extremely important for protecting permafrost.

The Greenland ice sheet is the second largest on Earth, covering 1.71 million km². It holds the equivalent of 7.4m of potential sea level rise (BedMachine v3.- Morlighem et al., 2017).

There is a lot of permafrost in the Arctic. This is partially frozen ground, which is immensely important since it stores over 1.4 trillion tonnes of highly organic carbon. Today’s best estimate is that permafrost contains twice the carbon content of today’s atmosphere (Arctic report card, 2019). This means that permafrost thaw emissions could use up 25-40% of the remaining

Since 1971, we have lost about 50% of Arctic sea ice. As global warming melts sea ice, the ocean is exposed, absorbing more of the sun’s energy and warming up. As a result, scientists estimate that if we lose the Arctic snow and ice, it will magnify global warming by 25-40%.