After another year of climate impacts in the Arctic, scientists warned of a new scourge hitting the region, marine trash.
According to Reuters, scientists began noticing the trash bobbing in the icy water or piling up on Alaska Bering Strait-area beaches last year.
“That’s a direct result of increased human maritime activities,” said climate scientist Rick Thoman of the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy.
The garbage indicates “what climate change is allowing people to do in the region,” while Russian was the most common language on debris found in the Bering Strait on items where language could be identified.
More specifically, between 2016 and 2019, voyages by fishing, cargo and military ships jumped 58% along the region’s busiest lane along the Siberian coast, with experts saying that the traffic will increase as global temperatures continue to rise.
Furthermore, underwater soundscapes in the Arctic have grown with the rumble of ships passing.
This year also saw the first rainfall on record over Greenland’s highest elevation, while the World Meteorological Organisation confirmed a new record high temperature for the Arctic in June 2020, when the Siberian town of Verkhoyansk hit 38 Celsius (100 Fahrenheit).
Finally, by most annual metrics, 2021 was not an extraordinary year for Arctic warming, but it fit with the trend of warming well beyond the rate of the global average.