Wildfires are bigger. Arctic ice is melting. Now, scientists say they're linked

In the Arctic Ocean, sea ice is shrinking as the climate heats up. In the Western U.S., wildfires are getting increasingly destructive. Those two impacts are thousands of miles apart, but scientists are beginning to find a surprising connection.

For Arctic communities like the coastal village of Kotzebue, Alaska, the effects of climate change are unmistakable. The blanket of ice that covers the ocean in the winter is breaking up earlier in the spring and freezing up later in the fall. For the Iñupiaq people who depend on the ice, it's disrupting their way of life.

But what happens in the Arctic goes far beyond its borders. The ice is connected to weather patterns that reach far across North America. And scientists are finding, as the climate keeps changing and sea ice shrinks, that Western states could be seeing more extreme weather, the kind that fuels extreme wildfires.

This is part of a series of stories by NPR's Climate Desk, Beyond the Poles: The far-reaching dangers of melting ice.

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This episode was produced by Berly McCoy and edited and fact-checked by Rebecca Ramirez. The audio engineer was Patrick Murray.