Blasting A/C in the Arctic

They never used to need air conditioners up in the Arctic.

But earlier this year, officials in the Canadian Inuit territory of Nunavik authorized the installation of air conditioners in official buildings for the first time. Artificial cooling was necessary, they decided, because summertime temperatures in some southern Arctic villages have climbed into the 80s in recent years.

Inuit families in the region never used to need to shop in grocery stores, either. But the Arctic seas that always stayed frozen well into the summer have started breaking open much earlier, cutting off hunters from the seasonal caribou herds on which their families depend for sustenance.

and more signs of change....

Ice-covered areas of the Arctic seas have been declining at the highest rate in a century of recorded observations.

Mosquitoes were sighted in Resolute Bay last year for the first time.

Experienced Inuit hunters are falling through the ice along routes they once traversed with ease.

Polar bears are hungrier and venturing more frequently into Inuit villages.