Arctic sea ice

Copenhagen 2: dangers ahead

by Bryan Walker June 22, 2009

The second section of the Copenhagen synthesis report, Social and Environmental Disruption, discusses the dangers of climate change relating to society and the environment, noting that scientific research provides a wealth of relevant information which is not receiving the attention one might expect.     Considerable support has developed for containing the rise in global temperature to [...]

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Start me up

by Gareth June 16, 2009

Above: a new animation of Arctic sea ice from 2000 to May 2009, from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research and KlimaCampus of the University of Hamburg in Germany. It accompanies their first contribution to this year’s sea ice forecasts — and they put the odds of a new record minimum at [...]

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North to Alaska

by Gareth June 11, 2009

Interesting times in the Arctic, as spring turns into summer and the sea ice melts towards its summer minimum. Will this year’s minimum be a new record, or will the ice bounce back towards the long term (but still downward) trend? The first scientific forecasts of the season are expected soon from the Sea Ice [...]

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Friday omnibus #37b

by Gareth May 15, 2009

To keep things ticking over while I’m in Auckland for the Royal Society’s inaugural Science Book Prize presentation here are a few items that have caught my eye over the last few days: The BBC reports on the end of the Catlin Arctic Ice Survey expedition, and prompts UK ice specialist Peter Wadhams to comment [...]

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Quirk, strangeness, not much charm

by Gareth May 6, 2009

Another day, another angry diatribe from Air Con author Ian Wishart — longer and more intemperate that his last, but I’m getting used to the style. It seems he believes that attack is the best form of defence, which is great if you’ve got the ammunition (like the Crusaders backs of recent seasons, if not [...]

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Extreme Ice Now

by Bryan Walker May 6, 2009

“Once upon a time, I was a climate-change skeptic. How could humans affect this huge planet so much?  Could activists be creating a new cause to sell?  Could scientists be trying to create research grants?  Could the computer models be wrong?  Could the media be over-hyping the science? “Though if I was once a skeptic, [...]

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Cracking up

by Gareth April 22, 2009

With the “pin” to Charcot Island gone, big cracks that first formed in 2008 are are opening up in the Wilkins ice shelf, and a new break up is taking place close to Latady Island. The animation above uses ESA “webcam from space” images captured on April 18 and 21 (the latter has black corners). [...]

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Melt away

by Gareth April 7, 2009

As winter turns to spring and the melt season begins, the Arctic sea ice looks to be primed for another bad summer. Multi-year ice is down to only 10% of the total extent — down from 40% during 1979-2000, and new work on ice thickness suggests that the ice cover is thinner than at any [...]

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Come a little bit closer

by Gareth April 3, 2009

Estimates of when the Arctic will be substantially ice free in summer used to be out towards the end of this century. In 2007, the IPCC’s fourth report suggested that there would still be a fair amount of summer ice in the 2080-90s, but the record minima of recent summers have been forcing a rapid [...]

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We can run, but we can’t hide…

by Gareth March 26, 2009

This article appeared in the Perspectives section of The Press yesterday, as part of the paper’s build up up to Earth Hour this weekend. I haven’t seen the letters page today, but I expect the usual suspects will be out in force… The news isn’t good. Since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) advised [...]

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