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 either 28%, or with an enhanced model that takes better account of current ice conditions about 49%. Close enough to my gut feeling of 50/50 to allow me a little confirmation bias, I think… The press release is here, and the full forecast here (pdf). The AWI modelling is part of the Search forecasting exercise I mentioned last week. The full set of forecasts should be out in the next week to ten days, according to project co-ordinator Jim Overland, and I’ll cover them when they become available.
Tag: Arctic sea ice
North to Alaska
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 Outlook project coordinated by ARCUS, the first yacht has set sail for an attempt to get through the Northwest Passage, and the usual suspects are insisting that the ice is continuing to recover. So what are the odds of a new record this year, and how is the ice really doing at the moment? The picture’s mixed…
Friday omnibus #37b
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 on the current state of the ice: “By 2013, we will see a much smaller area in summertime than now; and certainly by about 2020, I can imagine that only one area will remain in summer.” For this year, the Canadian Ice Service expects a summer minimum similar to the last two years.
- However much I moan about NZ’s big emitters arguing for delay and inaction (there was a particularly specious piece by Catherine Beard of the Greenhouse Policy Coalition in the Herald yesterday), our politicians have it easy compared to lawmakers in Washington. The Guardian reports that coal and oil interests lobbying against emissions reductions have spent US$45 million in the first three months of this year.
- Aficionados of conspiracy theories (Wishart, are you reading this?) will enjoy this review by Johann Hari of Voodoo Histories, a new book by David Aaronovitch: “[Aaronovitch] argues that we keep returning so obsessively to conspiracy theories because they are, paradoxically, reassuring. “Paranoiaâ€, he writes, “is actually the sticking plaster we fix to an altogether more painful woundâ€: the knowledge that life is chaotic and random and nobody is in charge.”
- New Scientist explores the deep roots of our understanding of the greenhouse effect by looking at the life of John Tyndall. Well worth a read.
Quirk, strangeness, not much charm
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 this one 🙁 ), but rather unwise if you lack basic understanding of the issue in contention. I’ll deal with the points he raises, but can’t resist first giving you a flavour of his writing:
I could go on, and on, but I don’t see why I should bear the burden of disproving your half-baked schoolboy science masquerading as genuine informed comment on climate change. I’ve illustrated here that Gareth Renowden’s credibility on climate change, based on his Air Con review, is non existent. Go for it Truffle, crawl back to your den and think carefully before launching ad-hom attacks on me again.
“Half-baked schoolboy science”? Oh the irony, the chutzpah…
Extreme Ice Now
“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, I’m not one anymore. The evidence is in the ice. This knowledge of melting glaciers made me despair. But despair and defeat are not options. We must invest in our optimism and in our strength. This is the way forward.”
Not a lot of words for the first nine pages of a book. But they are ingeniously arranged and interesting to look at. And they point straight to the heart of James Balog’s Extreme Ice Now: Vanishing Glaciers and Changing Climate: A Progress Report. The book’s publication by National Geographic was timed to coincide with his film Extreme Ice recently showed on National Geographic channels and previewed here.
Balog is an award-winning American photographer, exhibitor in many museums and galleries and author of photography books. After gaining a master’s degree in geomorphology he turned to nature photojournalism, covering a range of subjects over the years, including endangered wildlife and trees. Latterly his attention has focused on ice. Outdoor adventure has long been part of his life.
Extreme Ice Now contains a number of short essays written by Balog, interleaved with many wonderful photographs from the ice world. He explains the Extreme Ice Survey, begun in 2007, a collaboration between image-makers and scientists to document the changes transforming Arctic and alpine landscapes. Time-lapse cameras in selected places, taking images once in every hour of daylight over a period of years, are part of the record, along with a portfolio of still images, and the documentary film. Art meets science to convey the reality of global warming to a worldwide audience, to celebrate the beauty of the landscapes, and to assist scientists understand the mechanisms of glacial retreat. “If the story the ice is telling could be heard by everyone, there would no longer be any argument about whether or not humans are causing global warming. We are.”
His essays are mostly about his personal response to this realisation. He puzzles over what is holding us back from acting. He thinks probably a natural psychology of denial, allied with complacency, avoidance of responsibility, and fear. Add to this the “toxic effluent” poured through journalistic pipelines by vested interests to counter solid, observed, physical, empirical facts, and we have a recipe for confusion.
Balog chooses optimism though doesn’t find it easy: “…photography is something of an act of love. The sustained attention we give to our subjects draws us closer and closer as we get to know them better … I was filled with despair when I realised that the object of my fixation just might vanish before I returned in October.” But the idea that the people of his time will be the ones responsible for destroying something as monumental as the climate of this huge planet is too sickening to accept. Despair is not an option. We must exercise the will-power and technological resolve needed to change our ways.
The interest in Balog’s reflections is not that they offer any new information, but that they express very well the thoughts that probably many of us entertain in the face of the ongoing evidence of global warming. And they encourage us to believe that a solution can be found and to commit ourselves to working for it. The voice from the increasing ice flows of Greenland or the retreating glaciers of the Rockies and the Andes lends determination to those of us who frequent less challenging terrains.
The book may be for the coffee table but it has serious things to say as well as striking images to delight in.