Brave New Arctic

An insider account of how researchers unraveled the mystery of the thawing ArcticIn the 1990s, researchers in the Arctic noticed that floating summer sea ice had begun receding. This was accompanied by shifts in ocean circulation and unexpected changes in weather patterns throughout the world. The Arctic's perennially frozen ground, known as permafrost, was warming, and treeless tundra was being overtaken by shrubs. What was going on? Brave New Arctic is Mark Serreze's riveting firsthand account of how scientists from around the globe came together to find answers.In a sweeping tale of discovery spanning three decades, Serreze describes how puzzlement turned to concern and astonishment as researchers came to understand that the Arctic of old was quickly disappearing--with potentially devastating implications for the entire planet. Serreze is a world-renowned Arctic geographer and climatologist who has conducted fieldwork on ice caps, glaciers, sea ice, and tundra in the Canadian and Alaskan Arctic. In this must-read book, he blends invaluable insights from his own career with those of other pioneering scientists who, together, ushered in an exciting new age of Arctic exploration. Along the way, he accessibly describes the cutting-edge science that led to the alarming conclusion that the Arctic is rapidly thawing due to climate change, that humans are to blame, and that the global consequences are immense.A gripping scientific adventure story, Brave New Arctic shows how the Arctic's extraordinary transformation serves as a harbinger of things to come if we fail to meet the challenge posed by a warming Earth.

"[A] fascinating book about how researchers came to understand Arctic warming and its causes. . . . As he documents this process, Serreze doesn’t shy away from the failures of the Arctic research community, including his own. Particularly interesting are the mea culpas from Serreze and fellow scientists who chased scientific red herrings or, deafened by the din of natural climate variability, misread the data. The Arctic, Serreze writes, ‘tells no lies.’ But its truth can be hard to discern."---Ashley Shelby, New York Times Book Review, "[Serreze] has also written a farewell to ice. In Brave New Arctic, he relates that when he first started out in polar research, in the early eighties, he was taken with the idea of global cooling. ‘Deep down I was hoping for an ice age,’ he confesses. . . . Years passed, the ice continued to melt, and Serreze came to favor fire. ‘The weight of evidence turned me,’ he observes. ‘And then I turned hard.’ He gives the perennial sea ice until 2030 or so. ‘That the Arctic Ocean will become free of sea ice in late summer and early autumn is a given,’ he writes."---Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker, "[Brave New Arctic] delves into the recent history of Arctic research, following a trail of scientific breadcrumbs from the late 1970s to the present day to show how our understanding of the region’s response to climate and climate change has evolved over time. . . . Serreze succeeds on one important front: humanizing Arctic science. He tells anecdotes about his research and the people he’s worked with. He portrays scientists whose work he discusses as regular people.", "Without the strong research on the Arctic led by people like Serreze, we would be flying blind into what could be a very dangerous future."---Tim Flannery, New York Review of Books, "[Serreze] shares the story of how he entered the field of climate science by accident; why, at first, he thought the climate might be getting colder rather than warmer, based on measurements from complicated Arctic weather systems; how, year after year, he became further convinced about the reality of global warming due to slowly accumulating data; and why he began to participate avidly in a scientific consensus combating climate-change deniers, most of whom have been politically motivated. Ultimately, what Serreze produces is a kind of detective story; the major crime is the human causation of global warming. . . . An alarming, evidence-based book by a scientist who is not by nature an alarmist."

Mark C. Serreze is director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, professor of geography, and a fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the coauthor of The Arctic Climate System. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

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