As forecast, the dome of heat that brutalized Western Europe has moved over Greenland, where it has triggered a massive spike in surface melting of snow and ice.
In coming days, the abnormal heat could also cause the Arctic’s floating lid of sea ice — which is already trending at record low levels for this time of year — to shrivel even further.
But if you pay attention to Twitter, it almost seems as if we’ve entered the Arctic Apocalypse. So with this story, I decided to take a deep breath and report as dispassionately as I could on what’s happening.
I started by getting in touch with Mark Serreze, Director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center — which among other things, publishes daily updates on surface melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet and the extent of Arctic sea ice. I asked him for his overall take on what’s happening. Here’s what he told me:
“There have always been what one could call ‘heat waves’ in the Arctic,” he said. That’s just part of the natural variability of weather.
