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Executive Summary for January 21st

We review and analyze the latest news and most important developments in the Arctic, including record-setting temperatures in 2015, new Arctic investment guidelines and a study that finds the navigation season of the Northern Sea Route remains too short to draw investments for now.

Published on Jan. 21, 2016 Read time Approx. 3 minutes

Another Temperature Record-Smashing year

The global temperature record was officially broken – again – in 2015. Three independent climate analysis centres – the U.K. Met Office, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA – have all reached the same conclusion, reports the Guardian.

Data from the U.K. Met Office found an increase of 0.75C (1.35F) higher than the long-term average between 1961 and 1990. The global average temperature of the planet was 0.12C (0.23F) warmer last year, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It’s the largest year-to-year increase in more than a decade.

“Usually when we set new records they’re incremental, hundredths of a degree at a time, this was quite a bit jump to a quarter of a degree Fahrenheit. In NOAA’s record it is the largest leap from an existing record to a new record that we’ve had,” said NOAA’s Deke Arndt.

Both Nature and the New York Times have reports on the planet’s warming trend, and Carbon Brief looks at why 2015 topped the charts.

The U.K. Met Office expects 2016 will set a new record, according to the Guardian. If that happens, it will mean three years in a row of setting new global temperature records. Breaking records may soon become the norm, Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, told the Associated Press.

But a new study says that using the increase in global average temperatures may not be the best way to communicate climate change, and the pressing need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Arctic states know that even if we manage to rein in the global temperature rise to 1.5C or 2C (2.7F to 3.6F) above pre-industrial levels, they will be faced with much greater warming. In a world where the average temperature rises by 2C (3.6F), Arctic temperatures will head beyond 5C (9F). Emission cuts could come faster if we focus on the regional impacts of climate change, reports Carbon Brief.

Arctic Investment Protocol to Be Released Today

The details of the Arctic Investment Protocol will be released today in Davos, Switzerland, reports Bloomberg. The guidelines focus on the long-term sustainability of Arctic development, by calling for input from indigenous communities, ecosystem protection and preventing corruption.

Scott Minerd, global chief investment officer at Guggenheim Partners, tells Bloomberg that a $1 trillion investment in infrastructure may be needed to work responsibly in the Arctic, based on figures of infrastructure projects that have already been planned.

The protocol would be voluntary, but companies would have to commit to the protocol to be able to borrow from a financial fund devoted to Arctic-based projects, Minerd told the Alaska Dispatch News last year.

Short Season Will Keep Northern Sea Route Investments Away

A study by researchers at the Copenhagen Business School’s Maritime Division finds that the navigation season for the Northern Sea Route will remain too short to attract investments in ice-class vessels, High North News reports.

The study looked at the feasibility of investing in an ice-class container ship that uses the the NSR instead of the Suez Canal route.

The researchers used a tool, available for download, that is designed to compare Arctic shipping to traditional routes. It calculates the costs per container by including capacity, speed, distance, transit fees, vessel specifications and other factors, according to the article.

Recommended Reading

Top image: 2015 was the warmest year since modern record-keeping began in 1880, according to a new analysis by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The record-breaking year continues a long-term warming trend — 15 of the 16 warmest years on record have now occurred since 2001. (Visualization Studio/Goddard Space Flight Center)

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