GR: Arctic warming and polar ice cap melting are proceeding as predicted. The predictions should have alarmed our governments. The reality is going to be painful. Our governments and elected leaders chose to ignore the warnings in return for handouts from the fossil-fuel industry. The voters are beginning to catch on, but our politicians probably think their bag of loot guarantees them a happy future. However, they are not going to like the unavoidable extreme weather events they’ve helped lock in to our future.

“There’s a real atmospheric brute towering over the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea at this time. A high pressure system that would put shame to most other anti-cyclonic phenomena that bear the name. It is sending out a broad, clockwise pattern of winds. It is pulling up warm air from the Pacific to invade the Bering, Chukchi, East Siberian and Laptev Seas. And its torquing motion is shattering the already considerably thinned ice beneath it.

A powerful high pressure system over the Beaufort Sea is predicted to further strengthen by late April 15. Image source: Earth Nullschool.

“Clocking in at 1046 mb of pressure, it makes typically strong 1030 mb high pressure systems seem weak by comparison. Over the next day it is expected to strengthen still — hitting 1048 mb by late April 15th (coming very close to an extraordinary 1050 mb system).

Shattered Sea Ice

“This powerful and strengthening system has already been in place for about two weeks — slowly gaining momentum as its circulation has moved in mirror to the waters of the Beaufort Gyre that swirl beneath it. Masked only by a veil of sea ice considerably thinned by human-forced climate change, the waters of the Beaufort are now breaking through. Streaks of dark blue on white in an early break-up enabled both by a terrible Arctic warming and by this powerful spring weather system.” –RobertScribbler (More: Under the Arctic Dome — Brutish High Pressure System is Wrecking the Already Thinned Sea Ice | robertscribbler.)