With the world expecting to celebrate world records at the London Olympics from today, the weather in recent weeks has delivered many high scores we should be less happy with:  Record breaking high temperatures in the USA, droughts in Canada or deadly floods in Russia are just the most prominent examples.

Now there’s more. This summer, ice in arctic regions has been melting more extensively than ever seen before.

NASA scientists reported that in mid-July a whopping 97 percent of Greenland’s ice surface was melting. While the amount of surface melting can change extensively and in a matter of days (depending on the temperature of the air above), it’s never been observed to cover that large an area in more than 30 years of satellite observations.

Is this just a freak event or global warming in action? Scientists are careful not to draw a direct link between extreme weather events and climate change. For good reason: Some phenomena may not have been observed before, but scientists are not surprised to see them regardless of a global warming. Cores drilled out the Greenland ice sheets can help recover the temperature history for the place and indicate that extreme melting  regularly occured every 150 years or so. This summer’s thawing episode is “right on time”, says one NASA glaciologist.

But the accumulation of extreme weather events is something you would plausibly expect under conditions of global warming, says Global Ideas climate expert Anders Levermann of the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research. Even then, “we can’t say what the further impacts will be,” he cautions. In the case of Greenland “we don’t know what a period of extreme melting actually means except that in this moment more water is being lost and the water level is rising.”

Taking a long hard look at individual regions, however, can help establish more direct links between regional trends and global warming. At least 70 percent of the reduction of Arctic sea ice over the last 30 years may be man made suggests a study by a British-Japanese team of scientists. Here’s how the lead author puts it:

Today was a humbling day. The landscape of Svalbard belittles you, and makes you feel like a child discovering the world. It’s like seeing the engine that drives the planet naked, stripped down to its bear parts (pun intended). Our instructors (of the UN Environmental Programme) and the boat’s guides are our instruction manual, enabling us to read this landscape and relate it to the world’s climate and politics as well as our personal narratives.

What is amazing to me is that you can clearly see how natural forces have shaped every aspect of this landscape. The valley sides, exposed by the receding ice at the end of the last ice age are steeper than is stable and so are in a continual state of erosion. Pebbles and sand on the shoreline morph into a thin strip of tundra running parallel to the coast; this strip merges sharply into a 45 degree scree slope that rises some 200m before meeting a thick 100m band of vertical rock which was its parent. The dull rock where exposed is peppered with fiery red lichen giving its natural brown colour and orange twinge in the sunlight.

Even the young geological processes that have formed this valley’s recent features span the whole of human civilisation. Processes alien to our daily lives but innate to the earth/climate system that ultimately governs our planet. At the same time, some things here in the Arctic change rapidly. The weather can change in an hour from clear blue skies and sheet like oceans to wind, rain and an ocean speckled with white caps.

On current trajectories we could well see an ice free arctic in the summer within a generation. Such a process may well be irreversible on human timescales. I – we here on this trip may literally be one of the last generations to do this and see this unique habitat, this unique place at the top of our world. We are talking about a permanent voyage into the unknown, into a world alien to that which we have grown up in: a world less diverse in its cultures, less diverse in its environment.

We cannot make up for it later, with apologies, remorse or token efforts at recompense. But the fact remains that we still have a choice, we are not asleep at the wheel, just drunk driving. It’s time to sober up and realise that we have to take control of our future. We have to take responsibility, and we have to pay more attention to things that operate beyond the timescales that our daily lives suck us into. This we can learn from the Arctic.

By Sam Lee-Gammage

This post is an abridged version of a text taken from the British Council’s Arctic Climate Training blog Click here to learn more about the Arctic Climate Training project

We landed just 1400 km from North Pole… Surroundings is incredible after long time on the road everyting is getting smoothly. Glacier meeting town, sea and tundra flovers. Never ending sun is shining with burning strength, 10 degrees above zero. Only a unexpectedly great dinner in last civilization and we are leaving harbour on night sailing even more to the north.

This post is taken from the British Council’s Arctic Climate Training blog Click here to learn more about the Arctic Climate Training project

 I have just about thawed out enough to write this, having spent a couple of hours taking pictures and recording sound in the beautiful but chilly twilight of an Arctic afternoon in January. I’m reporting for Deutsche Welle from "Arctic Frontiers". Now what does that bring to your mind? Northern countries squabbling about territory? Or the frontiers posed by snow, ice and extreme conditions to all but explorers, adventurers and the hardiest of scientists? A conference is probably the last thing that comes to mind – unless, like me, you are into the science and politics of the Arctic region.

Every year at this time, when people in the Arctic celebrate the "return of the sun" after the long dark Northern winter (it stays light from around 9.30 until nearly three at the moment), the Arctic Frontiers conference brings scientists, politicians, decision-makers, students and NGOs to Tromsö, two hours flight from the Norwegian capital Oslo and in the Arctic Circle. The town likes to be known as Norway’s "gateway to the Arctic". Historically, it has been the base for Arctic expeditions and still is. A lot of the more "comfort-loving" travellers who pass through nowadays are tourists on cruise ships. And the way the climate is changing, Tromsö is likely to be the departure point or maritime "crossroads" for a lot more travellers – and a lot more goods, in the not too distant future.

The melting of the Arctic sea ice, a lot faster than anticipated, is making the remote wilderness of this ecologically fragile region much more easily accessible. US rear admiral Dave Titley said in a presentation here the US navy reckons with a whole month of summer with no sea ice as early as 2030. That date has been continually coming forward in recent years. The question is what it will mean for the Arctic – and the rest of the planet. "Arctic Tipping Points" is the title of this year’s conference – which goes on for a whole week, with a political and a science segment. The Arctic plays a key role in regulating the world’s climate. Scientists are trying to work out when key factors – like the melting of the sea ice, which also acts as a protective cover, reflecting heat from the sun back up and away from the earth – could reach a "tipping point", or point of no return, triggering further warming as the darker ocean absorbs more heat. One study quoted here says 6 of 14 elements identified as "tipping elements" in the "earth system" are located in the Arctic.

Other speakers – like the Rear Admiral – have other interpretations of "tipping points" – like the Arctic "tipping" from being a remote inaccessible area into a mainstream region for (literally) "business as usual". Well not quite as usual. This remains a harsh and dangerous environment. But the business opportunities are definitely there. And what do the conservationists, NGOs and indigenous communities up here have to say about all this? Join me for regular updates on the Ice Blog.