The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future Read Online Free PDF Page A

idea: figuring out how much northern landscapes might warm up, based purely on the ice-albedo feedback from reduced summer sea-ice. I told him he was on to something. It was critical to separate out the ice-dependent feedback from overall greenhouse gas forcing, I pointed out. That way, if the ice shrank faster than expected, we’d know what the immediate climate response could be—even ahead of the longer-term cumulative effect of greenhouse gas loading. We drained our pints and left. I promptly forgot all about the conversation until eighteen months later when I ran into Dave at a conference. Whipping out his laptop, he showed me a preliminary model simulation of his big idea. 295
    My eyes widened. I was gazing at a world with northern high latitudes plastered everywhere in vivid orange—a pool of spreading warmth as much as five, six, or seven degrees Celsius (8° to 12°F) higher—spreading southward from the Arctic Ocean. All of Alaska and Canada and Greenland were bathed in it. It grazed other northern U.S. states from Minnesota to Maine. Russia’s vast bulk was lit up from one end to the other. Only Scandinavia and Western Europe, already warmed by the Gulf Stream, were untouched. Then I looked closer and saw what time of year it was.
    November . . . December . . . January . . . February. The warming effect was greatest not in summer but during the coldest months of the year . I was staring at a map of the relaxing grip of winter’s iron clench. It was an easing, a partial lifting, of the Siberian Curse.

The Siberian Curse
    The Siberian Curse is the brutal, punishing winter cold that creeps across our northern continental interiors each year. Western Europe and the Nordic countries, steeped in tropical heat carried north from the Gulf Stream, are largely spared. But from Russia to Alaska, and tumbling south through Canada into the northern U.S. states, the Curse descends each winter. The name was popularized in a book by Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy of the Brookings Institution, 296 but the concept is as ancient as life itself. When it arrives, the birds depart, the ground cracks, frogs freeze solid in their mud beds. At the extreme end, if temperatures plunge to -40°F (or -40°C, the Fahrenheit and Celsius temperature scales converge at this number) steel breaks, engines fail, and manual work becomes virtually impossible. Human enterprise grinds to a halt.
    Regardless of country, all NORC northerners seem to hold something in common when it comes to this special temperature: “Minus forties,” as such days are known, are universally despised. The shutdown of activity it commands has been described to me by restaurateurs in Whitehorse, Cree trappers in Alberta, truck drivers in Russia, and retirees in Helsinki. And while they otherwise express varying opinions about the problems or benefits posed to them by climate change, the one sentiment they all seem to agree on is relief that “minus forties”are becoming increasingly rare.
    The most crushing cold rolls each year through eastern Siberia. On a typical January day in the town of Verkhoyansk, temperatures average around -48°C (-54°F). That is far colder than the North Pole, even though Verkhoyansk lies fifteen hundred miles south of it. Such frigidity stirs up images of hardy Russians bundled in furs, trudging home with some fire-wood or vodka to beat back the elements. A less familiar image is Verkhoyansk in July, when average daytime temperatures soar to nearly +21°C (+70°F). Our same Russian friends now stroll in short-sleeved shirts and halter tops, licking delicious precast ice-cream cones that taste like pure vanilla cream.
    “So . . . what are you doing this summer?” I am asked this question twenty or so times per year. Invariably—after responding I’m going to Siberia, or Iceland, or Alaska—I win a puzzled look, followed by a nodding smile and the advice to not forget my parka and snow boots. When I explain I’ll actually require