Seven months into the coronavirus pandemic, arguments linking COVID-19 and the climate have become
ubiquitous. Like the current microbial threat, climate change is a dire emergency requiring a coordinated national
and international response.1
COVID-19 has also drawn attention to how threats converge—the pandemic
exacerbates existing global inequities in everything from food security to economic stability. Climate change has
acted as a threat multiplier for years: it is the ultimate converging threat.
Nowhere is this fact more apparent than in the Arctic, the region north of the Arctic Circle at 66.6° N latitude.
Thanks to a natural phenomenon known as Arctic amplification, the Far North warms faster than the rest of the
world.2
Scientists have long maintained this rate is twice the global average, but today the Arctic is warming almost
three times faster than the rest of the planet.3
Arctic climate change is a threat to U.S. national security. Defense officials tend to focus on the geopolitical
implications of melting sea ice, but the danger is far more diffuse. On the land and in the oceans, Arctic warming
threatens U.S. security interests by jeopardizing infrastructure resilience, food security, and population health.
The global climate system is tightly linked, so the rapid pace of Arctic climate change affects temperate
latitudes as well. Positive feedback mechanisms at work in the Far North strengthen the relationship
between the warming Arctic and a warming world. Since we face decades of baked-in climate change
no matter what happens to today’s emissions, the Arctic has likely already reached its climate tipping
point—the point at which further environmental change becomes irreversible and self-reinforcing.4
The question is whether we can mitigate Arctic warming enough to prevent a global tipping point.
