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Huge Freshwater Bulge In Arctic Ocean
New submitter turkeyfish writes "UK scientists are reporting today in the journal Nature Geoscience that a huge bulge of freshwater is forming in the Western Arctic Ocean caused by a large gyre of freshwater. The gyre appears to indicate that the ice is becoming thin enough over the Arctic Ocean that the wind is beginning to affect the motion of water under the ice. A sudden release of this water or its emergence to the surface will greatly accelerate the melting of the remaining polar oceanic ice and likely alter oceanic circulation in the North Atlantic."
Note the large, friendly letters.
Question seems to be, has this ever happened before? If it has, how would we know?
Will liberals stop at nothing to destroy the American Way of Life?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Melting sea ice won't lead to a significant increase in ocean levels, it's the land ice you have to worry about.
The freezing point of seawater is about 28.4F (-2C), instead of the 32F (0C) freezing point of ordinary water.
http://www.onr.navy.mil/focus/ocean/water/temp3.htm
I'm way behind schedule on my plans to gather everything up and git my ass to the mountains before it all goes to hell. Anyone interested in swapping some land up the hill a ways for some coastal Carolina soon to be beachfront property?
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
Read more about the thermo-haline cycle on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation.
I'll only start worrying if this gyre starts to gimble in the wabe.
Well, not yet, and that's from somebody who thinks that anthropogenic climate change is probably a true hypothesis.
For one thing the thinning or melting of sea ice itself has no direct effect on sea level -- just like melting ice cubes don't change the level of water in a glass. The picture the article paints is far more complex. In a nutshell, thinning Arctic ice may allow winds to mix colder surface water with warmer deep water. This would cause more ice thinning faster than changes in the atmosphere (if any) could drive change. Any effect on sea level would be indirect.
What I'm much more concerned with is human responses to this development -- or rather *political* responses. Russia is making territorial claims in the Arctic Ocean based on some creative interpretation of international law, because they think that climate change may open the Arctic to resource exploration. If they find oil up there, there could be a polar conflict between Russia the US and strained relations between Canada and the US.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It is the breaking of the well established currents.
More water in the system will destroy some of the well established ocean currents that drives the weather on the planet and have caused some stability for the last 15000 years or so.
Except that the fraction of the ice that is floating above the water is the volume it shrinks when it melts.
There's a second order effect due to higher density of the salt water, so there will be small net sea level rise,
and will also cause reduced atmospheric pressure due to less volume occupied which could bulge the surface,
but these effects won't flood your coast anytime soon.
Wealth will be measured using much different metrics.
Like how many canoes you own.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I read that too but I think it'll be a big game changer if the water circulation pump in the Atlantic gets messed up. I'd already read that lots of fresh water were are already detected further south than ever before. Lots of fresh water further south changes the current layering of water due to different densities of fresh vs salty water and that's what could screw things up.
a change in those currents means a change in water temps and that means a change in weather patterns.
It sure does seem like lots of stuff is melting all over the place and faster than "expected".
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Ice occupies more space than water. Melting of sea ice results in a drop in ocean levels, not an increase. only melting of land based ice results in a rise in sea levels.
But ice also floats on water. If you have ice floating in a glass of water, and the ice melts, the level of liquid stays the same.
But salty water is more buoyant than freshwater! So the icebergs would sit a tad lower as the salinity of the water decreases.
But TFA says it's mostly caused by the wind gyre that sucks everything up with a low pressure system. And the main effect has nothing to do with rise or fall of ocean levels, but with ocean currents that keep the North Atlantic relatively warm, but could plunge it into an ice age if the currents reversed (as was the case during the last ice age). Fun and amazing stuff.
I think its about 100 metres, which means half the current land masses would be underwater. As I understand it, this would be likely to take a thousand years to play out.
What happened in that movie was that the resulting super hurricane created an enormous low pressure cell which pulled extremely low temperature upper atmospheric air down to the surface.
This does not seem to contradict some observed "fossil" data, which shows mammoths frozen solid with food in their mouths. (Sorry, can't find a suitable citation. Most reports of this finding are from old field journals in the 1600s to 1800s.)
(Word 'fossil' in quotes, since subjects are not actually fossils, but chryopreserved corpses.)
I don't know if a reversal of the north atlantic current would do what was depicted in that movie, but there is evidence of previous cataclysmic and sudden climatological events in earth's history.
Personally, I prefer to think that if anthopogenic co2 is not responsible, it certainly can't be helping things any given what we do know. Eg, if you are genetically type 1 diabetic, eating super fatty foods and becoming obiese doesn't help you very much, and can compound the problem. (Because then you get type 2 on top of the type 1.)
We can control the amount of co2 that mankind releases, and not so much what nature releases with volcanism, etc. As such, if we are to try to mitigate the problem, anthropogenic sources are the first target of interest regardless of ideological position on the matter. (Unless you choose to ignore over a century's worth of scientific inquiry into the greenhouse gas nature of that particular compound.....) limiting and attempting marked reductions in such emissions would undeniably be a good thing, in terms of postponing a hypothetical carbon dioxide cascade scenario from occuring. (The arguments over source just limits how effective such measures might prove to be. If most of the problem is anthropogenic, such reduction could postpone indefinately, and if the bulk is natural, we might just stave if off a few decades. Something to consider when chosing to blame nature for this problem, as the implication is far more dire in the long term. Regardlss, limiting the rate using the variable we *can* control is simply a good idea, given the currently available information.)
I can't think of any other potential driving factor for such extreme climate changes without including major greenhouse gasses, such as co2, methane, and water vapor.
The cessation of the north atlantic current would deffinately change the weather in europe and north america, since warm, moisture rich air wouldn't get pushed to europe (europe would get much colder and drier) and cold, nutrient rich north ocean water wouldn't make its way into the caribbean, greatly impacting the food chain in that region, among other things.
The impact on climate, though, is dependant upon how long the current is suspended, the outcomes of snowfall in suddenly much chillier areas altering wind patterns, and the amount of water vapor staying in the atmosphere from equatorial regions taking over/enhancing the effects of co2 levels.
I don't know if the cessation of the NA Current would initiate a chain reaction or not, but it certainly would decimate many human industries, ranging from fishing to farming. That alone makes it a "bad thing" worth worrying about.
It won't affect glaciers on land. I don't see where you get that. The glaciers on land are melting too by the way. The glaciers on land melting will cause the sea levels to rise (Antarctica etc.).
The currents will never stand still however they will become a lot less active causing, as you said, the tropics to overheat and the north pole to freeze over. Yes, eventually nature will balance itself but this process will take a really, really long time while generations of people will either bake or freeze (depending on where they live) and the process will be violent.
Finally, it's indeed the CO2 from SUV's and coal plants that causes glaciers to melt but as the glaciers melt they also release the CO2 stored in/under them. Water acted as a sink to CO2 before the last ice age after which it froze and got captured in the ice. It's basically a positive feedback cycle which will only accelerate the process faster.
Climate change is real, global warming is real and the cause for this is real. This has been established by practically all scientists in the field. Denying it is as futile and idiotic as the few that still refute the theory of evolution based on their personal religious or political ideas.
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Right. The Greenland glaciers melting may be bad. Now, would you so kindly tell me how a fresh water plume will affect glaciers ON LAND?
noone would need to tell you what will result when that happens - if you had used your brain to think this more than just 2-3 seconds.
freshwater plume forming means that there is some source that is supplying that freshwater. freshwater, therefore, will grow unless the current trend changes. and when it grows, it is going to affect EVERYthing in that ecosystem. especially arctic is populated and dependent on endless plankton that would not take the transition from salt water to fresh water well. ALL of these creatures and the higher ones are parts of the climate there with their activity and byproducts. and when the sea gets affected with that ecosystem change, it will also affect the land microclimate.
Finally, I thought it was CO2 from our SUV's and coal fired plants causing glaciers to melt. Now it's fresh water?
so, in light of the above, just stop posing funky statements without thinking for a few seconds.
there is no easily detectable dynamic of CLIMATE CHANGE. the climate, will change with average global warming. other than the measurable average global warming of a mere 1-3 degrees - which is so pathetic a difference in daily life that you would not feel it by the way - it is a totally chaotic system ; because the average 1-3 degrees worldwide is the result of all temperature averages averaged worldwide - from minus 50s to high 50s.
there is no telling what will happen to your microclimate in your locale as the globe warms up on average. you may remain unaffected, or get hit by freak weather or conditions.
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Finally, it's indeed the CO2 from SUV's and coal plants that causes glaciers to melt but as the glaciers melt they also release the CO2 stored in/under them.
I mostly agree with what you said except for bits about SUV's etc. This is more a smokescreen diversion from the real problems. For instance buy local products instead of imported cheap crap. The link at the bottom indicates that running one particularly large cargo ship supposedly pollutes as much as 50 million cars each year (likely a gross exaggeration but still worth considering)
http://www.gizmag.com/shipping-pollution/11526/
Climate change is real, global warming is real and the cause for this is real. This has been established by practically all scientists in the field. Denying it is as futile and idiotic as the few that still refute the theory of evolution based on their personal religious or political ideas.
Just curious... Can you tell me how many of these scientists predicted a fresh water plume, stirred by iceberg moved by high winds, would cause more ice to melt? I can't seem to find that prediction anywhere. I did, however find that high winds will cause the water to cool quicker via evaporation, which should have fixed that pesky iceberg problem, made the water saltier, thereby fixing that overabundance of fresh water problem that started this whole discussion. That was on the Wiki page for Thermohaline circulation. It says, "Wind moving over the water also produces a great deal of evaporation, leading to a decrease in temperature, called evaporative cooling. Evaporation removes only water molecules, resulting in an increase in the salinity of the seawater left behind, and thus an increase in the density of the water mass. In the Norwegian Sea evaporative cooling is predominant, and the sinking water mass, the North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW), fills the basin and spills southwards through crevasses in the submarine sills that connect Greenland, Iceland and Great Britain. It then flows very slowly into the deep abyssal plains of the Atlantic, always in a southerly direction."
Also, is CO2 the only gas stored under glaciers? I mean, if the atmospheric CO2 concentration at the time the glaciers formed was so high that releasing a fraction of that gas would be enough to heat the world... wouldn't the planet have been too hot to form these glaciers in the first place?
I'm not trying to be smart ass, but if you don't question, you never learn. And you never EVER give up your freedom of the word of someone else without at least asking a few questions and pointing out gaping logical holes.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Indeed. But I question the intensity of cold needed to freeze a blubber insulated, and wooly adult mammoth solid, while it is actively grazing.
Even a dead mammoth, put in a commerical freezer, would take several hours to freeze to such a state.
The cold would have had to have been sufficient to kill said mammoth quite quickly. Mammoth species had evolved pretty clever biology to prevent such an outcome. (Mutant hemoglobin, thick blubber layer, excessive secretion of sebum and thick, wooly body hair, just to name a few.) Humans, by comparison, are simply "ready to freeze" meat popsicles.
The fact that there was someone there to look at the formation of the plume means that it is not entirely unexpected, as in "someone got their project funded, and thus made a reasonable case for it".
Of course this would be found/discussed in fairly technical papers. If you trust journalists to do science reporting right, I have a bridge on the Moon to sell.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0924796395000062 for example dates from 16 years ago.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1034/j.1600-0889.2001.530504.x/abstract is from 11
years ago and directly related. Hint: sciencedirect or google scholar are a better way to get scientific information/papers than plain google.
Think plate tectonics. The land surface of the Earth does not stay in one place. Heck, there are some areas on the California coast that were once attached to Antarctica.
Except Gore never lied about inventing the internet. Some weenies on the other side just took his words and twisted them so it sounds like he did. From the Wikipedia article on Al Gore and information technology:
Of Gore's involvement in the then-developing Internet while in Congress, Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn have also noted that,
As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high-speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship [...] the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises.
His use of "irony" was ironic, though. Gotta give him points for that.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
I would start by picking up an average textbook on climate. You don't seem to understand the difference in time scales and energy between balanced weather/climate events and the unbalanced forces that create climate change. Again, feedback loops. It's not only the CO2 stored in the frozen water, it's the CO2 trapped in the frozen water + the CO2 and other greenhouse gasses WE HUMANS are adding.
Also, the last time there was such massive climate change there was a significant event that caused it (meteorite impact), now we humans are the significant event.
The effect will be even worse once the antarctic starts melting more significantly than it already does because not only will it release the CO2 trapped but also any matter that has been frozen (plants, microbes, animals, humans) or the life that cannot survive the change will start releasing methane and other greenhouse gasses common to rotting.
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Predictions are rarely that specific. They're not going to tell you that's there's a fresh water "plume" as TFA so indicates. What predictions do is give you trends, and the effect of these trends on the overall system. The predicted effects are also not specific, but instead the prediction of more trends.
Reality is a little different. There's a lot of noise in the system. The variances of what happens and is expected to happen can be extreme. But the average--the predicted trend--will remain barring unaccounted for variables that may make things much worse or much better. This plume may be a part of the trend. Or it may be one such deviation from the system. Or it could be an unaccounted for variable that's about to accelerate the glacial melt timeline significantly.
Only time will tell whether the initial predictions still hold after this. And if the data doesn't support it, it will be revised. But I can't imagine that 20+ years worth of data supporting the predicted trend will be outright reversed by one event. To even fancy such a notion so would be wishful thinking indeed. More likely, things will either get a little better, or a little worse.
Of course, there actually is a point of no return that we are quickly approaching, and even if things go better than expected for us and the predictions are on the high side, we'll still end up there if we don't change our lifestyles. There's a huge amount of methane stored in the Siberian tundra. Methane is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2. It's a missile compared to the bullet that the trapped CO2 in glacial ice would be. As the tundra begins to defrost, methane gets released into the atmosphere. When the climate reaches the point where the permafrost is no longer permanent, no amount of CO2 emissions cuts will be able to prevent the sudden release of greenhouse gas into the environment. And at that point, everyone might as well start staking their turf on high ground.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
If all of the ice on Greenland and Antarctica (and other lesser ice caps) were to melt it would cause a bit over 200 feet (~65 meters) of sea level rise. However, it would take thousands of years for all of that ice to melt The ice on Antarctica averages ~7,000 feet in depth and it's up to ~12,000 feet in places so it won't melt that fast at any temperature that still supports humans living on the Earth. Current estimates for sea level rise by 2100 are in the 3-6 foot range. 20 feet above the current level isn't inconceivable in 2200.
Regarding what it would take to melt all of it, a paper out recently said that the big ice sheets started to form when CO2 levels dropped below 700 ppmv maybe 30 million years ago. We are currently at ~390 ppmv, up from 280 ppmv in 1830 and ~320 in 1960. At the current rate we would hit 700 ppmv in less than 200 years.
(Undoing moderation to post this)
IPCC 3 WGI Chap 11 Table 11.3 estimates a 61m sea-level rise if all of Antarctica melts, and 7m from Greenland. This could take 1500 years, though other factors like lubrication might speed this.
It's also worth noting that sea levels have already risen 120m since the last glacial maximum.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Not to be a total dick, but they weren't telling you that "sky is falling" as you are pretending. At least not the credible sources.
They were telling you, and everyone else who listened that this is a self-feeding accelerating process with a known effect in the end however. So when you see evidence that supports the claim like the OP, it gets harder and harder to claim ignorance. Other then by using strawman argument, like you did.
Of course, given the modern trend of "give me everything now, fuck the future", who really cares?
Except Gore never lied about inventing the internet.
You're right, of course -- but the denialist side wins the argument anyway, because now we're no longer discussing global warming, we're discussing a politician's history and alleged misdeeds instead. Any discussion that ends up on a completely different topic counts as a tie, and ties count as a win for the status quo.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
No, Azolla deposits from the Azolla Event during the Middle Miocene are believed to contain huge amounts of crushed plant material that would likely make it rich oil and gas strata. The problem will be, however, the anthropogenic reverse Azolla event that will likely speed the thawing of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets should this material be extracted and burned.
Actually, the earth was warmer in the Eocene than it was now. The clincher is that it took tens of millions of years to get that way and reverse after the Azolla Event. Human induced carbon dioxide pollution is forcing the system at a rate of 100-1000 times the natural rate. If you throw in the release of 90 GT of methane from clathrates on the arctic ocean floor and methane in from the melting of the permafrost, perhaps you add another 900 GT of methane, more or less all at once, which eventually becomes C02 as methane degrades in about 30 years, such as occurred during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum then we may see as much as 6 C increase in global warming in a very short period of time. This has some scientists worried that we may soon pass or that we may have already passed a tipping point toward runaway heating.
To put that into perspective that means sea temperatures could rapidly return to mid-Eocene levels at the North Pole, about 55 F. Unless you are Santa, it would probably be much warmer at your house. Needless to say, growing food in much of the US or perhaps almost anywhere would be no easy task, especially since much of the mid-west will likely again be underwater.
I'm not a climatologist so take this with a grain of salt. First off the models are VERY complex and there are subtle interactions arising here and there that weren't predicted in any of them. Then again you don't need to know your skin will brown in the oven to figure out that staying in it just might be bad. The data is in and the consensus is rather clear from what I've read. Exactly how things will happen is still being debated but we can already see the effects: extreme famine in Africa, increase in severity of storms in the southern U.S. and Caribbean, high heat summers in Europe (that kill a fair number of people). Personally, I see it in a simple way:
1. Climate change will be as bad or worse than predicted and we do nothing - basically we create our own nasty future and the next generations get our mess dropped in their lap and who knows we just might even wipe out our own species but hey at least we got that new ipad.
2. Climate change is not as bad as we think and we over-react in moving to a more localized and carbon neutral economy - this MAY create a short to medium term financial constriction for the time we are doing it but when the change has been made it most likely will increase the productive capacity since there will be less waste and more efficient energy usage as a result.
I really have a hard time seeing terrible fallout from this in the long term unless of course you happen to be an oil company.
You mention that you are giving up your freedoms to the government to battle climate change. What freedom exactly are you giving up? To be honest I've seen a lot of freedoms in the U.S. given up to "keep us safe from terrorism" which seems a side effect of the U.S. middle east policy. It sure seems to me that if we didn't need oil from the middle east tensions would most likely decrease there and maybe, just maybe we can get some freedoms back (say like the freedom to go through an airport with dignity in tact and without your wife/mother/daughter getting molested or the freedom to not be arrested without warrant and tossed in some foreign prison, you know things like that). Climate change would most likely be battled through regulation on energy/transportation/other energy consuming industries. How exactly will that impinge your basic freedoms or do you have a right to cheap foreign goods?
Isn't it odd that there would be oil anywhere near the poles? It would mean that area had to have had a massive amount of plant and animal life there at some point in the past. Exactly how hot was the Earth back then?!
Two reasons -- one, land masses move. The physical rock under the poles are part of the contentinental plates that used to be near the equator, which is why there's so much oil sands in Canada. Secondly, there are two "normal" states for the Earth -- frozen (30-40% ice coverage) and hot, with conditions like you see in equatorial regions today everywhere, with no permanent ice. The reason we have ice at the poles and warm everywhere else is because right now we're in an interglacial period *in an ice age*. It is a *weird* condition, historically. Now, its entirely plausable that the "global warming" is working to keep us from slipping out of the interglacial period -- we're already significantly beyond the point where most of them appear to have ended in the past. So that's arguably a potentially good thing. Humanity spent most of its existence during the glacial periods, but the planet sure can't support 7 billion people that way.
A bigger concern is if global warming was to tip us *out* of the existing ice age. Humanity *hasn't* lived through a warm period on the Earth. In fact, large mammals in general haven't. No one is particularly sure if the planet can support *any* people that way.
But in either case, there's oil at the poles because that land was near the equator when the deposits that turned into oil were layed down.