Big Deal in the Cold North: Finland vs. Canada

The past winter was exceptionally warm in Northern Europe – according to a recent study, it was even the warmest in at least 2,000 years. That’s why it is interesting that in April, the extent of Arctic sea ice was only the ninth smallest in recorded history (see figure).

This was the case despite the fact that in March, the sea ice area in the north was the smallest since satellite records began in 1979, and April was also warmer than usual in Finland. It remains to be seen whether the Arctic Ocean will melt enough by autumn for the sea routes passing through it to gain renewed attention.

This is also tied to the fact that Finnish and Canadian shipbuilders are competing to sell icebreakers to the United States. In this respect, the Finns have a clear advantage, as only Finland currently has the capacity to build the 40 icebreakers that the U.S. needs – which may be the reason why Canada has offered the U.S. the possibility of building Canadian-designed icebreakers on U.S. soil.

However, in this context, one might imagine that the U.S. would take note of the fact that even the Canadians have just ordered an icebreaker from Finland. And so, to play it safe, they might place their order with Finland as well.

On the other hand, it is clear that 40 icebreakers cannot be built in a year or two, and for that reason, the Americans might well split the order between the competing parties. It remains to be seen how this competition will play out – or whether the entire Arctic will melt to the point that, in three years' time, there will be little to no need for icebreakers in the Arctic Ocean at all.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Northern Sea Ice Area Has Not Responded to Exceptionally High Temperatures
Ice Sheet Losses in Antarctica and Greenland
Russia Pays the Price for Its Foolishness

Does Arctic sea ice melt as atmospheric greenhouse gases increase?

According to the Finnish Meteorological Institute, the past year in Finland has been somewhat warmer than usual. According to its measurements, "the average temperature for the entire country was about 3.2 degrees, which is 0.3 degrees above the long-term average of the years 1991‒2020. The annual average temperature ranged from a little over +7 degrees in the southwestern archipelago to about -1 degree in the northwestern part of Lapland."

In contrast, the past year in China was the hottest in its entire recorded history. Additionally, according to Helsingin Sanomat, it "experienced several extreme weather events and heatwave periods" last year.

Not surprisingly, December's news reported that the past year was the hottest in the world's recorded history. Therefore, it was intriguing to revisit my old hobby of studying the development of the Arctic ice cover. According to climate models, it should be warming faster than the rest of the world due to the increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The figure below shows the annual variation in the ice cover's average area throughout its measurement history.

It can be seen that despite the exceptionally warm year according to measurements taken at ground-level weather stations, the average size of the Northern polar ice cap has actually been trending more towards growth than shrinkage in recent years.

In the next figure, I drew an even more interesting graph. It represents the average size of the Northern sea ice in September - that is, the area during the month when the ice is at its minimum.

As my esteemed reader may notice, the area of the Northern sea ice was quite small last September. Not the smallest in recorded history, but the second smallest.

Therefore - or despite it - I delved with great enthusiasm into the task that I have been tackling year after year. That is, the statistical analysis of the relationship between the concentration of the most crucial greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, and the average size of the Northern sea ice in September.

In this analysis, I have taken as a starting point the hypothesis of climate models suggesting an accelerating climate change over time, which, according to these models, should be most rapid in the Earth's Arctic zone. As we all know, the ice should indicate this change through both the direct impact of warming in the Northern polar region and the increasing heat energy brought by warmer water from southern currents.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed as the picture was very similar to the previous year's corresponding analysis, as shown in the illustration below.

In the figure, the blue columns represent the number of years for which statistically significant dependence between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and the September average size of the Northern sea ice is observed using data from each respective year. As my esteemed reader can observe, this analysis clearly supported the climate models' prediction of global warming from the beginning of the measurement history until the year 2001.

From the year 2002 onward, I have drawn only red columns. Red, because there is no statistically significant dependence between atmospheric carbon dioxide and the Northern sea ice after that year.

The height of the red columns indicates the number of years of data available for each column – for example, for the year 2002, the available data includes the years 2003-2023, totaling 21 years. This is a significant eleven years longer than the statistically significant data starting from 2001.

In simple terms, this means that the annual minimum size of the Northern sea ice did indeed decrease as atmospheric carbon dioxide increased until the year 2001. However, the subsequent increase in greenhouse gas levels has not had a significant impact on the size of this ice cover. Thus, this analysis falsifies or disproves the claim derived from climate models that the Northern polar ice is melting due to the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration – or greenhouse gases in general.

The original thought in Finnish:
Sulaako arktinen merijää ilmakehän kasvihuonekaasujen lisääntyessä?

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
The increase in carbon dioxide concentration warms more than anticipated
The record-breaking warming of the oceans is not visible in the Arctic
Arctic sea ice contradicts with the climatic model predictions, but is that changing now?

Global warming - searching for the guiltiness

The predicted climatic warming by greenhouse gases is one of the big questions of our time, which determines even economic options of the future. Therefore it was interesting to read about an analysis, which gives estimates about the contribution of different countries in this threat.

The first calculation presented a simple calculation of the total amount of carbon dioxide including emissions from fossil fuels as well as from land use and forestry since 1850 up to 2021. There USA is clearly in the first place by its 20 per cent share, and followed from distance by China, Russia, Brasil, Indonesia, Germany, India, United Kingdom, Japan and Canada. 

The second calculation is based on the cumulative consumption of each nation. It only covers years from 1990 to 2021. In this calculation top ten includes the same countries as above, and in the same order. Therefore, often highlighted guiltiness of outsourced carbon emissions is not a major issue, although it adds to the share of responsibility accorded to wealthy nations.

The two other calculations are based on emissions per capita, but using different approaches. The first one takes a country’s cumulative emissions in each year and divides it by the number of people living in the country at the time. 

According to this calculation Canadians have the highest emissions. Thereafter come people of the USA, Estonia, Australia, Trinidad & Tobago, Russia, Kazakhstan, United Kingdom, Germany and Belgium. My home country, Finland, is in the eleventh place raising it high on the list. 

  

The second approach takes a country’s per capita emissions in each year and adds them up over time, and on top of the list are inhabitants of New Zealand followed by people of Canada, Australia, United States, Argentina, Qatar, Gabon, Malaysia, Republic of Congo and Nicaragua. Finland is not among the top 20. 

Taken together, the four classifications above shows that carbon emissions are not a simple case. And therefore politically active actors may select the list that best serves their purposes. 

Therefore all of us, who are targeted, should be cautious, and put the claims in a frame. For example, as a Finn, I should agree that consumption of me and my national fellows are causing considerable amounts of carbon compared to most other people, but also remember that our total share of the global emissions is like a drop in an Ocean. And to understand, that our high per capita emissions is largely caused by our geographic location in a cold climate as well as the large area of the country resulting in a higher need of domestic travel than in most other countries. 

Actually, I would have liked to see a calculation, where the cumulative consumption of each nation would have been divided by the area of the countries. As a Finn, I would happily prefer to use that as the most important criterion in evaluating the position of each nation in causing the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.  

My argument is based on the fact, that such a statistics would not reward nations from their increasing population - as the two per capita calculations above do - but rather encourage the nations with exploding population sized to act on this main cause of the global environmental crisis including climate, biodiversity and land use aspects.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Arctic sea ice contradicts with the climatic model predictions, but is that changing now?
Availability of coffee in a warming world
Advice to participants of the COP27 climate implementation summit