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by cma 2140 days ago
I'm not sure this is the reason for this specific observation, but one mechanism I've read of was that arctic air is very dry relative to equatorial, and any heating up increases its humidity, and in turn water vapor is a much more intense greenhouse gas than many other things, so it can cause more localized warming, which feeds a cycle. Why it isn't a complete runaway process i don't know, and I may be misremembering the details.
1 comments

And of course, Siberia and Canada will start emitting vast amounts of methane as permafrost thaws.
At least if the northeast passage opens up, we'll have a sea route between china and europe that doesn't go past the resource-cursed middle east.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Passage

Yeah but I think that diffuses everywhere after it happens, the humidity thing is a more localized effect.