Category: Climate science

(The Village) Greenland Preservation Society

tintinmilou.jpeg The latest satellite data shows that this summer’s snowmelt in northern Greenland was “extreme”, according to Marco Tedesco, assistant professor of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at The City College of New York. From the press release:

“Having such extreme melting so far north, where it is usually colder than the southern regions is extremely interesting,” Professor Tedesco said. “In 2007, the record occurred in southern Greenland, mostly at high elevation areas where in 2008 extreme snowmelt occurred along the northern coast.”

Melting was most pronounced near Ellesmere Island, where ice sheet collapses were observed, and around the Petermann glacier, which is also shedding ice. Melting lasted 18 days longer than average in these areas, and the melt index (area times days) was three times higher than the 1979-2007 average for the region.

Underlining the dramatic changes being seen in the far north, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its second Arctic Report Card earlier this week…

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Across the university

My computer asked me to update iTunes this morning, and with the latest version installed a whim took me to the Music Store, then into iTunes U – Apple’s rather US-centric title for a huge collection of university lectures and podcasts, audio and video, from academic institutions around the world. There’s stuff from Otago, Yale, Stanford, Cambridge – and recently added, lectures from my alma mater. If you use iTunes and have an account at the Music Store (you can open an account by giving them a credit card number, but do not then have to buy anything) there is a huge amount of free material available for download. I have a couple of lectures from University of California’s Santa Barbara campus (UCTV) to watch: James Hansen giving the Nierenberg lecture at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute, and a lecture on methane hydrates. It’s a great resource – but be warned, you need lots of bandwidth to take advantage of the videos…

If you have any favourites from iTunes U, let us know in the comments.

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Freezing

NSIDCmultiyear081004.gif With this summer’s Arctic sea ice minimum done and dusted, the first analyses of the season are beginning to appear. The NSIDC’s latest press release suggests that ice volume decline continued:

NSIDC Research Scientist Walt Meier said, “Warm ocean waters helped contribute to ice losses this year, pushing the already thin ice pack over the edge. In fact, preliminary data indicates that 2008 probably represents the lowest volume of Arctic sea ice on record, partly because less multiyear ice is surviving now, and the remaining ice is so thin.”

Click on the thumbnail above to see the big picture on multi-year ice reduction. The large area of red first year ice will obviously become second year ice next year, but the continuing reduction in thicker, older ice sets the stage for further big losses the next time the Arctic has a warm summer. The European Space Agency confirms this, quoting US National Ice Centre Chief Scientist Dr Pablo Clemente-Colón:

Although last year’s summer sea ice minimum extent record was not broken, a record amount of the thickest multiyear sea ice was actually lost this season impacting the thickness of the sea ice presently found around the North Pole region and setting the stage for more minimum or near-minimum records in upcoming years.

The ESA also provide some nice images…

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Catch a (micro)wave

carbonscape.jpgThere are some amazing people in NZ. Just when I’m tearing (what’s left of) my hair out at the idiocy of some politicians, along comes a news story to gladden the heart of anyone living in the real world. Yesterday, Blenheim-based start-up Carbonscape reported that it has just begun batch production of charcoal in a microwave oven the size of a double garage. Wood waste goes in at one end, the oven heats it up and it turns into charcoal – giving off syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The charcoal can be added to soil (as biochar, aka terra preta), fixing the carbon away from the atmosphere and improving soil fertility, while the syngas can be burned to create energy to drive the process – known as pyrolysis.

Carbonscape call their oven the Black Phantom, Stuff reports:

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Every loser wins

The Arctic sea ice has started its autumn freeze up. Both the NSIDC and Cryosphere Today metrics show significant increases over their minima for the year, and so I’ve settled my debts to Malcolm and William “Stoat” Connolley. To settle Malcolm’s bet, I have donated $40 to Women’s Refuge (they’re sending a receipt, which I will happily post when it arrives if Malcolm so wishes), but with William I have elected to go “double or quits” on next year’s minimum. He does get a signed copy of Hot Topic though, and it should be with him by the weekend or early next week. To ensure carbon neutrality for the airmail shipping, I will plant an extra tree in the truffière… 😉

So what are the prospects for next year? Will the ice consolidate a little more, hover around the 2007 and 2008 level, or beat 2007? My gut-feel (and, in the absence of further info on how the ice finished this summer, that’s all it is) is that the odds remain roughly 50/50 on a new record. A warmer winter than last, or a sunnier summer is all that it might take to cause greater loss. So I’m happy with my double or quits – at least for the time being.

NSIDC September 24th update here (note continuing reduction in multi-year ice). NASA reports that ice loss in August was fastest ever seen – and produced an excellent animation of ice coverage over the year (in right column, third image down). Meanwhile, ice loss from Greenland is also increasing (there should be much more concrete info later this year when the 2008 summer season reports start appearing), and a team at Ohio State University are beginning the Arctic System Reanalysis project, which will “merge a decade of detailed atmospheric, sea, ice and land surface measurements into a single computer model-based synthesis. The coupling of these immense data sets will produce complex and instructive descriptions of the changes occurring across the normally frigid, remote region.” The project will generate about 350 TB of data. Won’t run on my Macbook Pro, then… Plus there’s some learning about ice going on at the blog of a real ice man – Bob Grumbine’s More Grumbine Science here.