Tag: Arctic

Arctic meltdown: two views and a bit of PIG

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G08xPmxR28U&w=480]

From NASA’s Earth Observatory Youtube channel: a great video showing the calving of this year’s Petermann Ice Island. Most impressive is the speed with which it passes down the Nares Strait. And to provide a little North-South symmetry, today’s EO Image of the Day shows the steady enlargement of a giant crack in the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica, which will calve the biggest piece of PIG in recent history, sometime soon.

For a somewhat different reaction to what’s going up North, try this video from Greenpeace’s Save The Arctic campaign. Great fun…

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOHKu2vFp34&w=480]

Prat watch #7: the unbearable rightness of being wrong

The carefully cultivated cocoon of ignorance over at New Zealand’s own tiny corner of the climate crank echo chamber has been glinting in the harsh light of reality in recent weeks, as a number of climate realists (that is, people who have a realistic appreciation of what climate science is all about, not cranks attempting to purloin that term) have taken to bringing uncomfortable facts to the commentary under Richard Treadgold‘s strange little posts. It’s been a most amusing sight, watching the blizzard of misdirection and misunderstanding attempting to counter persistent reality. But Treadgold, bless his possum-merino socks, is undaunted and recently addressed this year’s dramatic Arctic sea ice melt with the determined insouciance of one terminally disconnected from reality.

Why does everyone feel guilty about the disappearance of the Arctic ice? All it proves is a bit of warming; it most certainly does not prove a human cause for that warming.

As seasoned Treadgold watchers might expect, it gets worse…

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Why Arctic sea ice shouldn’t leave anyone cold

In this guest post Neven Acropolis, the man behind the excellent Arctic Sea Ice blog, looks at the reasons why we need to pay attention to the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.

Arctic sea ice became a recurrent feature on planet Earth around 47 million years ago. Since the start of the current ice age, about 2.5 million years ago, the Arctic Ocean has been completely covered with sea ice. Only during interglacials, like the one we are in now, does some of the sea ice melt during summer, when the top of the planet is oriented a bit more towards the Sun and receives large amounts of sunlight for several summer months. Even then, when winter starts, the ice-free portion of the Arctic Ocean freezes over again with a new layer of sea ice.

Since the dawn of human civilisation, 5000 to 8000 years ago, this annual ebb and flow of melting and freezing Arctic sea ice has been more or less consistent. There were periods when more ice melted during summer, and periods when less melted. However, a radical shift has occurred in recent times.

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Ever since satellites allowed a detailed view of the Arctic and its ice, a pronounced decrease in summer sea ice cover has been observed (with this year setting a new record low). When the IPCC released its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007, it was generally thought that the Arctic could become ice-free somewhere near the end of this century. But changes in the Arctic have progressed at such speed that most experts now think 2030 might see an ice-free Arctic for the first time. Some say it could even happen this decade.

2 albedofeedbackWhat makes this event significant, is the role Arctic sea ice plays as a reflector of solar energy. Ice is white and therefore reflects a large part of incoming sunlight back out to space. But where there is no ice, dark ocean water absorbs most of the sunlight and thus heats up. The less ice there is, the more the water heats up, melting more ice. This feedback has all kinds of consequences for the Arctic region.

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A change is gonna come: no Arctic sea ice and our planet with a different climate

The crunch is coming. Before the end of this month, or very soon after, the Arctic sea ice will set a new record summer minimum for area and extent, by any measure. The only question remaining is by how much 2007’s record will be beaten. For the rest of the world, those of us who aren’t habitually glued to the Arctic Sea Ice Blog (where Neven’s counting the dominoes as they fall — one, two, three, four, five, six so far), or who aren’t checking the wonderful images from space that NASA assembles into an Arctic mosaic, or in the Greenpeace team hanging on to a Russian oil drilling rig, we have a simple lesson to learn. The climate of the northern hemisphere has changed, and with it the climate of the planet. And we have precious little idea of how that change is going to affect all of our futures.

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Pump up the volume (before the ice is gone)

Early results from the European Space Agency’s Cryosat-2 satellite, launched in 2010, suggest that the Arctic sea ice volume in summer is currently being lost at the rate of 900 cubic kilometres per year, Robin McKie reports in The Guardian. By combining Cryosat data with other sources they have concluded that there has been a dramatic reduction in sea ice volume over the last eight years:

In winter 2004, the volume of sea ice in the central Arctic was approximately 17,000 cubic kilometres. This winter it was 14,000, according to CryoSat.

However, the summer figures provide the real shock. In 2004 there was about 13,000 cubic kilometres of sea ice in the Arctic. In 2012, there is 7,000 cubic kilometres, almost half the figure eight years ago. If the current annual loss of around 900 cubic kilometres continues, summer ice coverage could disappear in about a decade in the Arctic.

Ten years (or less) ’til its gone in summer. I hate to say I told you so, but…

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