Ice-Free Summers Coming To Arctic

rocketjam writes "CNET reports that researchers from the University of Arizona and other universities have concluded that the Arctic will likely see ice-free summers within a century due to the increasing rate of global warming. The melting will raise ocean levels worldwide, flooding coastal areas where a substantial proportion of the world's population live. The increasing rate of ice melt is already having an impact on people and animals in the Arctic. Currently, researchers cannot foresee any natural forces that will counteract the trend."

Comments

Won't someone please think of the snowmen!

[SeanTobin]

Well, the melting of the Arctic ice cap would be annoying to several dozen polar bears, and it will have a very strong effect on Greenpeace members. As to its effect on sea levels, that's something a little less strong.

For something to float, it must displace an equal mass of whatever its floating in. By definition, the north polar ice cap is displacing exactly its own mass in water. If it were to melt, the displaced water would take exactly the same amount of volume as the submerged ice. This would cause the world's ocean levels to rise by the exact amount of zero plus the volume of several dozen annoyed polar bears.

Now, if the Antarctic ice cap were to melt, we'd be in a world of hurt. The southern ice cap does not float in water, it is on top of land which means that the entire volume of any melted ice is added to the seas.

As far as its immediate effect, salinity in the local area would be impacted if we say, microwaved it away from space in the span of a month. And although IANAOS (oceanographic scientist), if it were to slowly melt away over a century, the salinity shouldn't be a factor. And if it becomes a factor for some reason, we have time to dump barges of salt.

Of course, there is always the outside possibility of the lowered salinity disrupting the gulf stream and turning the entire earth into an ideal habitat for the polar bears, who experience a rapid genetic mutation from the additional UV radiation from the depleted ozone layer and hunt mankind to extinction for getting them all wet in the first place.

Re:Won't someone please think of the snowmen!

[Osty]

The only flaw in your logic is that polar bears don't mind being wet.

Re:Won't someone please think of the snowmen!

[CosmeticLobotamy]

There's a VAST amount suspended above sea level. Melt this, and yes, oceans will rise.

What is it suspended by? If the answer is "more ice", then you're wrong. If the answer is "Greenland", then you're right. But from your wording, it sounded like we're dealing with the "you're wrong" one.

Re:Won't someone please think of the snowmen!

[braindead]

If the polar ice and the water around it had the same amount of salt, then you would be correct: the ice melting would not impact the ocean level.

However, when taking the different salinity into account, things change. As you know from Archimedes, the ice is displacing exactly enough water to offset its weight (that is, the displaced water weighs as much as the ice). The thing is, it takes less *saltwater* to do that than it would *freshwater*. So when the freshwater in the ice melts, the levels rise.

If you don't believe me, check this article, it includes a picture from an experiment.

Re:Won't someone please think of the snowmen!

[electroniceric]

While I appreciate your clever use of basic physics, perhaps you might allow some room for the idea that the earth is not completely described by the science you learned in high school.

One important phenomenon, as described excellently by another poster in this thread, is the the fact that ice is much fresher than ocean water, so the overall density of the ocean will (most likely) go down, and voile, sea level rises.

The second, as others have also elegantly pointed out, is that much ice is not currently displacing any water, so 100% the effect of its melting is to increase sea level.

There are non-sea level issues of vast importance as well. Even simple climate models show vast sensitivity to overall earth albedo (reflectivity) and they all show a feedback loop with accelerating warming when a substantive amount of polar ice is loss. The fact that we're seeing this melting now is pretty strong clue that warming is going to speed up.

Also of great importance is the contribution of this new fresh water (and thanks to decreased albedo a great deal more heat absorbed by the earth) to the hydrologic cycle, as water vapor is also an important greenhouse gas. If the melted ice becomes water vapor, you can expect - again - increased rates of heating.

And yes, the poles get less heat from the sun than does the equator - the transport of that heat is the ultimate source of all weather patterns. So a substantial change in that heat balance can cause vast disruptions in weather patterns. In addition the potential shutoff of the Gulf Stream and general thermohaline circulation, there are potential movements of large high and low-pressure patterns that can bring intense droughts and flooding to numerous places, in the same way that El Nino does. And since climate systems are strongly nonlinear, it's very hard to predict where and when those events might occur. The effect could be anything from a little more sun in places to life-threating droughts. Put it this way: if something like the North Atlantic Oscillation can set conditions for a devastating hurricane season in the tropical Atlantic (as we're poised to get), imagine what a climate change several orders of magnitude larger could involve.

You can argue all you like about whether these changes are majority anthropogenic or not, but it is indisputable that our carbon-loading of the atmosphere is like pressing hard on the accelerator when you're going down a steep incline. Carbon dioxide content is a big, big, lever for global climate, and I'm hard pressed to see value of taking the Wile E. Coyote approach to dealing with this particular change in our world.

How about?

[DaedalusLogic]

Solar activity cycles? I heard a scientist from NASA say that we are on the high end of a cycle of solar output. In 100 years it is just as likely that we'll be on the low end of solar output.

I heard, (hearsay evidence, so check it out for yourself.) that their are paintings made in Holland from a few hundred years ago that show people ice skating on a river that doesn't freeze over now. That river was also never depicted as having frozen over before those paintings were made.

There are many variables that effect our environment. While we make an impact, and we should strive to lessen our impact... One scientists study... or a group of scientists work... should be taken with a grain of salt.

Re:How about?

[trewornan]

It's a well known fact that Europe (and presumably the rest of the world) went through a cold period in the Dark Ages (approx 500 - 800AD). Such periods are common and known as "mini ice ages".

Re:And actually, slightly less

[SeanTobin]

Ice is less dense than water, so we might even see sea levels *decline*

Sadly, no. The difference in density between ice and water is manifested in the ice that is above the water line. Grab yourself a tall clear glass, fill it half way with water and add a big ice cube. Mark the water line. Come back in an hour once the ice cube melts and check the water line. It will be in exactly the same place.

Remember, the ability of an object to float is not (directly) related to its density. Its related to its ability to displace water and its mass. The reason submarines float (or sink) is because their shape displaces a greater mass of water than the equivalent mass of water that would fill their volume.

If you take a piece of steel and put it in a bucket, it sinks and raises the volume of the bucket by the volume of the steel. Take that same piece of steel and form it into a boat hull and it will float -- and the volume of the bucket will increase by exactly the same amount even though all of the steel is not submerged.

Investiment Opportunities

[truckaxle]

Global warming is here. There are those who will attempt to disagree but the evidence is growing.

So the question is how to strategically pick investments that will pay off with the trend. Sounds greedy and selfish but the tragedy of the commons will not be denied. So ideas

• Short ski resort stocks in fringe areas.
• Short insurance companies since hurricanes will tend to be more prevasive
• Short northern europe in general since the gulf stream will cool the area
  
  
• Buy energy stocks as more energy will be required to cool and heat with more temperature extremes
• Buy Wind, Wave, Solar, Nuclear energy stocks as the public will eventually demand more emphasis on non-green house gas sources.

Any other ideas?





Firefox users get Hot Sauce at a discount.

Que the global warming rants

[aussie_a]

People are going to say that it's possible that global warming isn't a result of us humans and that it's a natural cycle of the planet. You're right, it might be a natural cycle of the planet, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing. Nature has killed off 90% of the ecosystem in the past (Permian to Triassic period). That aint exactly a good thing people.

And even though there's the possiblity (I won't go into how likely it is) that it's natural, shouldn't we do our best to counteract it's effects as much as possible? Even if it is natural? Because if it isn't, we might have a really big problem on our hands.

Or we can play the blame game, and argue whether it's man's fault or nature's fault, and possibly not pass on a liveable planet to our future children.

Re:Global Warming

[BWJones]

OK, so all of you knuckleheads that are responding to the parent post by making glib comments about no hurricanes earlier in history...... Read the post! Although I suppose you are corroborating my suspicions of the prevailing wisdom here, please note that the sea levels and flooding due to storm surge and such are what I was talking about. As the overall temperature increases, sea level rises leading to more problems with flooding. I might also say that more than one climatologist has suggested that more and stronger hurricanes might be expected from global warming as well.

But not all of the Arctic ice cap is afloat

[erikaaboe]

Here a a few stats from a quick Google search or three-

The total area of Greenland is around 2,175,600 km2 (840,000 sq mi), of which about 84 per cent, or some 1,834,000 km2, is ice cap.

The average thickness of the Greenland ice sheet is over 2000 m.

The area of the oceans is what, 360,000,000 km2?

Melt all of Greenland's ice and is that 10 meters?

Ouch. Er, glug...

Re:Global Warming

[loqi]

Right, humans can't touch nature. That's why we have a surplus of acid rain and a deficit of ozone and passenger pigeons.

Re:Global Warming

[Capsaicin]

You link this hurricane to global warming and I'll do a backflip

Start doing backflips sonny. This particular hurricane cannot of course be specifically blamed on global warning. However, one of the most consistent predicitions of modelling over the last decade and a half has been the expectation of an increase in the frequency and strength of extreme weather events. So we can say that this hurrican is not inconsistent with predicted climate change.

Start paying attention over the next decade or two. When you start getting one in a decade hurricanes several times a decade, or you get 4 or 5 hurricanes per season, you should consider yourself put on notice.

Re:Global Warming

[TekPolitik]

or is that evulushun

No, that's "evil-you-shun". It's obvious really. Evil-you-shun is the work of the devil and was actually devised by al-Quaeda to steer God-fearing Southern Baptist Americans away from their faith. Have you looked at pictures of Charles Darwin and Osama bin-Laden? The beard is a dead giveaway. Plus, have you ever seen them in the same place twice? Think about it.

And of course when faced with evil-you-shun, then as a God-fearing American (and let's face it, if you're not God-fearing you have no business being an American), you'd darned well better shun it.

Orwell's question

[jet_silver]

George Orwell mentioned in a column (http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/O /OrwellGeorge/essay/tribune/AsIPlease19441103.html ) that melons grew freely in England between 1600 and 1650, and asks whether the climate could have changed that much in three hundred years since they wouldn't do that in 1944.

We might be returning to the way things were, instead of having an Unprecedented Catastrophe.

Re:Wait for it....

[BigDogCH]

Global warming doesn't exist. There is a lot of evidence that proves it doesn't.

1. It was colder than average at my house for 2 days last week.

2. The planet is supposed to get warmer and colder, it is natural. Just look at the tropical fossils and dinosaur bones in Canada. The temperature changes are natural.

3. Man has only been on this planet for 10,000 years, it says so in the bible. This means the scientific data uncovered about earths climate is wrong. It was probably planted by the devil.

4. It has been cloudy for 2 weeks, how can it be warming with no sun?

5. Doesn't ice expand when it freezes, so melting would lower the sea level right?

6. I have a paintball gun, powered by C02. That stuff is cold! How could it warm the planet?

7. We can't be sure the planet is getting warmer simply because the measurements say it is. Don't cloud the issue with facts.

8. If there is soo much C02 around, then why are my garden plants dead? The extra C02 should make them grow fast. I only got 4 cuekes this year.

9. How can the planet be getting so much warmer when more and more of the world now has air conditioning?

10. If the planet was getting that much warmer, we would see a consistant rise in the stock price of anti-perspirant companies. Us overweight americans are using less deodorant than ever!

you got the facts wrong

[cahiha]

For something to float, it must displace an equal mass of whatever its floating in. By definition, the north polar ice cap is displacing exactly its own mass in water

That's neither "by definition" nor in actual fact; significant parts of the ice in the arctic rest on solid ground. When that ice melts, it will raise the sea level. It won't be anywhere near as dramatic as when the southern polar ice cap melts, but it will have an effect.

more excuses and misinformation

[cahiha]

Finally, the economic change - read as depression - that would come from doing "drastic" things stands a good chance of killing as many people as climate change might.

There is not an iota of evidence that reducing carbon emissions would lead to a depression. Quite to the contrary: it is quite clear that an aggressive move to energy efficient technologies would create new jobs and growth, and would lower operating costs. Scrapping the energy inefficient technologies of today and building new power plants and factories is probably the best thing that could happen to the US economy.

The only people who stand to lose are the people who have large investments in current, inefficient technologies.

First off, we just don't understand what is happening or why.

I'm sorry you haven't been paying attention, but we do understand what is happening and why it's happening.

Unfortunately, if we are in a position where human-added CO2 is the root cause of all of this, we cannot afford the luxury of these kinds of measures. Sure, they might have some effect and that might help. But if we're the cause of climate change, far, far more drastic measures need to be taken right now.

As comparison with other Western nations alone shows, the US could easily cut its CO2 emissions in half without any decrease in its standard of living; quite to the contrary: a serious program to do that would increase the standard of living and create jobs.

Furthermore, if you think you can't "afford" that level of change, what do you think loss of what is probably going to be 50% of the currently inhabited area of the US is going to do to quality of life? Because that's what's going to happen if the trend continues.

Secondly, the third-world countries would bitterly oppose anything that cuts them off from the developed world or limits their exploitation of fossil fuel energy.

They sure do, because the message we are sending right now is that we want to limit them while continuing our wasteful energy use, since our negotiating position is to use our current, wasteful usage as the basis for future budgets. I suspect developing nations would easily agree to a uniform global per-capita energy and fossil fuel budget.

Re:more excuses and misinformation

[Dachannien]

The only people who stand to lose are the people who have large investments in current, inefficient technologies.

That'd be most transportation, utility, and manufacturing companies. And the effect of "losing" is that the cost of production of their goods goes up during the changeover to cleaner production methods. That means that everyone is paying more - a lot more - for the same goods they bought last year, without a corresponding increase in wages. Sales decrease, so profits decrease, so people lose jobs.

All that "extra money" goes into producing equipment that doesn't add anything to the growth of the economy, unless the new methods of production also happen to be more efficient cost-wise (which they aren't, and I think that's the failing in your logic - "cleaner" and "more efficient" don't overlap given technology today, while you were assuming they do).

If, as you say, "an aggressive move to energy efficient technologies would create new jobs and growth, and would lower operating costs," then why aren't developing nations jumping at the opportunity to create this new growth? The reason the US didn't sign Kyoto is because developing nations were made exempt from the conditions of the treaty. They were made exempt because they were viewed as being less able to afford such changes. That flies in the face of your statement that changing technologies is a boon to a nation's economy.

They sure do, because the message we are sending right now is that we want to limit them while continuing our wasteful energy use, since our negotiating position is to use our current, wasteful usage as the basis for future budgets. I suspect developing nations would easily agree to a uniform global per-capita energy and fossil fuel budget.

Of course they would, because it uses a faulty metric that's in their benefit. A better measure of what's being done with one's energy consumption isn't per-capita, it's per-dollar-GDP. With that measure, the US is far more efficient than (for example) China and India, whose ability to claim decent per-capita energy consumption is entirely due to the tremendous difference between their urban middle and upper classes and their gigantic rural farming lower class.

Furthermore, if you think you can't "afford" that level of change, what do you think loss of what is probably going to be 50% of the currently inhabited area of the US is going to do to quality of life? Because that's what's going to happen if the trend continues.

The US eastern seaboard isn't just going to roll off into the ocean all in one day, any more than the US is going to switch to nuclear power all in one day. What's more, it's unlikely that, if coastal flooding is going to occur, the US can do anything to stop it. A possible solution is to slowly begin encouraging people to move their homes and businesses inland (we have a lot of space), while building a newer energy infrastructure (nuclear power) as we make that move. The key here is slowly. As long as things are done gradually, the new jobs created by such a program won't be completely swamped by the jobs lost from suddenly shutting off the old infrastructure.

Re:And actually, slightly less

[grcumb]

"Ice is less dense than water, so we might even see sea levels *decline*"

Un-fucking believable. An entire thread of people who can hold forth about global climate change, when they can't even read a map!

For the geography-impaired in the audience: Greenland, Baffin and Ellesmere islands are really fucking big. And guess what? They're mostly covered with ice. Which might just melt, too.

Re:And actually, slightly less

[Floody]

(assuming that global warming is fact, which all proven scientific evidence shows it's not)

I see. And of course you have links to back up this assertion from respected peer-reviewed journals?

I could understand if you had asserted "mankind is not the direct cause of current global climate change." That's something that is quite disputed by various climatologists; so one could be forgiven for ill-advisedly "picking" a side. The problem though, is that your assertion that "all proven scientific evidence shows it's not" (i.e. global warming is not occuring) is absolute bunk.

That global climate change is occuring is a forgone conclusion, the data clearly shows trending towards average global warming and increased atmospheric co2. Current science is focused on change rates; specifically problems involving sampling history, techniques, statistics and force modeling. Without solid data and working representative models, it's very difficult to put forth a sound cause-hypothesis.

[Gaffen, D et al - Multidecadal Changes in the Vertical Temperature Structure of the Tropical Troposphere, Science vol 287, 18 Feb. 2000]
[Hegerl, G.C. and J.M. Wallace - Influence of Patterns of Climate Variability on the Difference between Satellite and Surface Temperature Trends, J. Climate vol 15, 2002]

Re:Yeah, but

[MillionthMonkey]

Isn't the icecap frozen fresh water? Maybe someone who really knows can tell us if it makes a difference that it is frozen fresh water floating on salt water.

Yes it does matter. While it is generally true that ice does not change the level of the water it's floating in as it melts, it isn't quite true if the ice contains a different concentration of salt (after it melts) than the water.

Here's a thought experiment:

Fill a water balloon with fresh water and freeze it. Drop it into in a bucket of water from the ocean. The ice inside the balloon floats, just like ice that is not in a balloon, because ocean water is 2.5% denser than fresh water, and fresh water is roughly 10% denser than fresh ice.

Now wait until it melts. Soon the water balloon is full of fresh water again. Has the level of the ocean water in the bucket changed? No. There has been a phase transition inside a floating body, changing its density, but as long as 1. it still floats and 2. its mass hasn't changed, the water level in the bucket doesn't care. The only thing that matters is the mass of the object (i.e. the mass of the displaced salt water), and the fact that the object continues to float.

But if you look at the balloon of meltwater floating in the bucket, you'll notice that it isn't totally underwater. The water line forms a little coin-sized circular "island" at the top of the balloon. This is because the bucket has ocean water in it. If the bucket had fresh water, you wouldn't see a part of the balloon sticking up above the water at all. The balloon might even sink.

Now rip the balloon. This will affect the water level. Why? Because when the balloon breaks, that little crescent of water, that was previously sticking up above the water line as an "island", isn't held together by the balloon anymore and it's free to spread across the surface of the salt water in the bucket, raising its level. Really, the salt water level isn't rising- the shape of the floating object (a blob of fresh water) changes, so that there's a layer of fresh water on top of the salt water. But we say that the water level rises anyway.

Again, if the bucket had fresh water, this wouldn't happen, because the balloon would be totally underwater even if it were floating and there would be no "island".

Remember it's only a tiny little bit of water in the island, and the amount is determined by the density ratio between the fresh water and the ocean water. The density of ocean water is about 2.5% higher than that of fresh, and that determines the extent of the balloon's rise above the water level.

This doesn't take into account secondary effects- we haven't taken into account the effects of mixing. The water might shrink a little bit as the brine and fresh fractions mix. (Similar to how mixing one part alcohol and one part water yields slightly less than two parts of 100 proof, because the water and alcohol molecules fit into each other somewhat.) But physical effects like that are not predictable by a thought experiment, and I'm guessing in the case of fresh vs. salt water that they'd account for much less than a percent of a volume change from what we'd expect. So to an elementary first-order approximation, we'd expect the water level of ocean water to rise when fresh ice melts in it.

How much will it rise? Probably by an amount equivalent to approximately 2.5% of the volume of the total fresh meltwater, divided across the entire surface area of the salty ocean water.

Ice on land is far more threatening to global sea levels. The effective meltwater contribution from landed ice is 100% by weight, not just a few percent as with floating ice.

Re:Yeah, but

[Decker-Mage]

No, it is a theory supported by computer models that may or may not have any relation to reality. I've spent my life working in the statistical modeling field and have an extensive background in numerous scientific and damn near every engineering field (see profile) and I can tell you that your model is only a good as whether what it predicts matches reality and exactly how closely.

Current models are all over the place as to what they predict and in almost every case what they predict isn't even close by an order of magnitude to what has happened in that past. Now how are we supposed to rely on models that can't even predict things by a factor of ten? Sheesh, give me a break! Heck, what is even stranger are the journal articles (light reading here) will start with the assumption that global warming is real, find contrary data, and conclude that global warming is real despite the contrary data. This isn't science, it's persuit of funding.

The plain fact of the matter is that to get funding today in various related disciplines to climatology you have to climb on the global warming bandwagon. Sad, but true. It is also interesting that many of the critics of global warming are retired and no longer need funding to persue their interests in the field. In statistics we'd call that strongly correlated.

Now this isn't to say global warming isn't real although I would challenge the notion that it is necessarily related to any man-related activity (that's for another post if anyone is interested). The only constant about the climate on this planet is change and that has been true since it accreted to a planet.