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Arctic Sea Ice Hits Record Low
Titus Andronicus writes "Angela Fritz and Jeff Masters of Weather Underground analyze this year's record ongoing Arctic ice melt. Arctic sea ice extent, area, and volume are all at record lows for the post-1979 satellite era. The ice is expected to continue melting for perhaps another couple of weeks. Extreme sea ice melting might help cause greater numbers of more powerful Arctic storms, help to accelerate the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and help to accelerate global warming itself, due to the increased absorption of solar energy into the ocean."
Time to buy shares in boats - or just buy boats.
It is time to accept that this is happening. Time to make the most of it. There are remote communities that will be well positioned in the Canadian Arctic for incredible economical opportunities.
High Prices for Groceries could become a thing of the past once the ice opens up for longer periods of time.
The Northwest Passage has the potential to become more important than Panama
It may well be too late to stop the warming trend, we will have to make the best of it.
I'm thinking of the sun's 11-year cycle and the recent larger-than-normal volcano activity
I.e., any explanation except the actual one.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There is natural variability but proxy studies of long term sea ice show it's been at least around 8,000 years since sea ice has been this low and more likely over 100,000 years during the last interglacial.
The Sun has been through three 11 year cycles since the first satellite went up in 1979 and there's not much correlation between it and sea ice in the record. Volcanoes would normally have a cooling effect and I'm not aware that there has been a significant increase in volcanic activity anyway.
The sea ice trends have been steadily downwards during the satellite era especially during the past 6 years as shown by the graphs on this page.
"any explanation except the actual one."
Continuing to deny the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is futile.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Uh... the data we have from ice cores go back way more than 33 years.
If you look at the IPCC report (wg1 chapter 2 page 136 although it's already starting to get a bit old), there is still a (minimal) chance that none of it is caused by CO2, because human release of aerosols cause a cooling effect. Of course there are other considerations like methane, etc. Most scientific organizations say things like, "most of the warming we've seen is caused by humans....." Although 'most' is a wiggle word that accurately represents our uncertainty on the matter.
It's also helps to take this into perspective, look at this graph, you'll see that we keep talking about the summer extent; the winter extent hasn't changed much. The past year was right up there with 1990s average. And the annual change is dramatically larger than the change in either the summer extent or the winter extent. Also, it is arguably more important to measure the thickness of the ice, rather than the extent, but a falling summer extent might suggest the thickness is shrinking as well. We are measuring that now, but only for a few years.
In any case you should check out this amazing picture from the article. Can you guess which direction the earth is spinning?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If you are measuring for only 35 years, a 35 year low does not mean only 35 years. It means at least 35 years.
But take a look at the data. It looks like a death spiral. The trend from the data is undeniable. Calling the current extent a record low sort of misses the point because the current amount of ice is a tiny fraction of what it was two decades ago.
Uh...based on 33 years worth of data.
Based on ice cores and seabed cores going back thousands of years.
Okay there, I guess the next time a severe winter storm comes up ...
This wasn't caused by one storm. There are nearly two million square kilometers of open water where there was sea ice a few decades ago, and that understates the problem because the ice is getting thinner by a bigger percentage than the extent is shrinking.
William Ewing (Columbia Univ), back in the '50s, said that he had evidence of a 60-year freeze/thaw cycle for the Arctic Sea. Evaporation from an ice-free Arctic Sea fed snow falls on Siberia, Canada and Greenland resulting in glaciers sending floes into the Arctic Sea. As the Sea got covered up the evaporation slowed and so did the glaciers. Rinse and repeat.
As the Arctic Ocean summer ice declines there is developing evidence it is having an effect on the northern polar jet stream, slowing it down and causing the meanders to get larger. This has the effect of bringing colder weather further south and warmer weather further north and slowing down the speed at which the weather moves through. That would explain why a few years ago when Florida was having freezing weather Greenland was practically balmy.
I don't get this obsession with Al Gore. He's like a spokesmodel for global warming. Bypass him and go directly to the source. If you're making your decisions about the validity of global warming based on personal animosity you're doing it wrong.
So, if it's happened sometime since the beginning of the planet, it's a situation we shouldn't worry about? Wrong. For the first 4 billion years, the planet was pretty primitive, and no state to support human life. In the remaining half-billion years there have been numerous extinction events.. Five of them have been labelled major extinction events where 50 to 80 percent of all macroscopic genera went extinct. If we screw up this planet sufficiently, we might well be looking at the so-called "sixth extinction" which could be worse than any of them.
No big deal? We depend on other species to get clean water and eat. Or do you think food and clean water is made in factories?
Of course, shit happens, and humanity will probably go extinct eventually. But this looks to be happening in the next century or so. Maybe you don't care whether your species outlives you, but some of do.
If you look at TFA, the record low that was just surpassed was set between 2006 and 2009. The records only go back to 1979, but the previous record low was not set in 1979; rather, the trend has been downwards ever since the satellite observations began.
Just a reminder to all the "skeptics" here: There are plenty of climate markets on Intrade. If you think the anthropogenic influence is overestimated, you can make quite a bit of money betting against the prevailing opinion there.
For some reason, "alarmists" seem a lot more willing to put their money where their mouth is than "skeptics". So far, they have also won a lot more on it.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Quick quiz: What is more effective for getting more snowfall on a given winter day?
a) lower temperatures
b) more moisture in the air
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Remember when there was a problem with acid rain?
Sulfur dioxide restrictions were implemented flexibly by a cap and trade system. The economic impact was obviously manageable, and the problem got addressed.
It's instructive to look at the political history of the idea of using market forces to distribute the effort of pollution reduction. Look up whose idea it was in the first place.
If anyone doesn't get it:
Less sea ice > more air moisture > more snow.
So yes, global warming would cause the winters to be harsher in snowbound areas.
If you are measuring for only 35 years, a 35 year low does not mean only 35 years. It means at least 35 years.
But take a look at the data. It looks like a death spiral. The trend from the data is undeniable. Calling the current extent a record low sort of misses the point because the current amount of ice is a tiny fraction of what it was two decades ago.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/08/new-paper-finds-deep-arctic-ocean-was.html ... 1–2C warmer than modern Arctic Intermediate Water." This finding is particularly surprising because it occurred during the last major ice age.
New paper finds deep Arctic Ocean from 50,000 to 11,000 years ago was 1–2C warmer than modern temperatures
A new paper published in Nature Geoscience finds "From about 50,000 to 11,000 years ago, the central Arctic Basin from 1,000 to 2,500 meters deep was
Deep Arctic Ocean warming during the last glacial cycle
T. M. Cronin, G. S. Dwyer, J. Farmer, H. A. Bauch, R. F.
Spielhagen, M. Jakobsson, J. Nilsson, W. M. Briggs Jr &
A. Stepanova
Nature Geoscience (2012) doi:10.1038/ngeo1557
In the Arctic Ocean, the cold and relatively fresh water
beneath the sea ice is separated from the underlying warmer
and saltier Atlantic Layer by a halocline. Ongoing sea ice
loss and warming in the Arctic Ocean have
demonstrated the instability of the halocline, with
implications for further sea ice loss. The stability of the
halocline through past climate variations is unclear.
Here we estimate intermediate water temperatures over the
past 50,000 years from the Mg/Ca and Sr/Ca values of
ostracods from 31 Arctic sediment cores. From about 50 to
11 [thousand years] ago, the central Arctic Basin from
1,000 to 2,500m was occupied by a water mass we call
Glacial Arctic Intermediate Water. This water mass was
1–2C warmer than modern Arctic Intermediate Water,
with temperatures
peaking during or just before millennial-scale Heinrich cold
events and the Younger Dryas cold interval. We use
numerical modelling to show that the intermediate depth
warming could result from the expected decrease in the flux
of fresh water to the Arctic Ocean during glacial conditions,
which would cause the halocline to deepen and push the
warm Atlantic Layer into intermediate depths. Although not
modelled, the reduced formation of cold, deep waters due to
the exposure of the Arctic continental shelf could also
contribute to the intermediate depth warming.
Paper finds Arctic sea ice extent 8,000 years ago was less than half of the 'record' low 2007 level
A paper published in Science finds summer Arctic Sea Ice extent during the Holocene Thermal Maximum 8,000 years ago was "less than half of the record low 2007 level." The paper finds a "general buildup of sea ice from ~ 6,000 years before the present" which reached a maximum during the Little Ice Age and "attained its present (year 2000) extent at 4,000 years before the present"
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/08/paper-finds-arctic-sea-ice-extent-8000.html
A 10,000-Year Record of Arctic Ocean Sea-Ice Variability—View from the Beach
Svend Funder1,*, Hugues Goosse2, Hans Jepsen1, Eigil Kaas3, Kurt H. Kjær1, Niels J. Korsgaard1, Nicolaj K. Larsen4, Hans Linderson5, Astrid Lyså6, Per Möller5, Jesper Olsen7, Eske Willerslev1
+
ABSTRACT
We present a sea-ice record from northern Greenland covering the past 10,000 years. Multiyear sea ice reached a minimum between ~8500 and 6000 years ago, when the limit of year-round sea ice at the coast of Greenland was located ~1000 kilometers to the north of its present position. The subsequent increase in multiyear sea ice culminated during the past 2500 years and is linked to an increase in ice export from the western Arctic and higher variability of ice-drift routes. When the ice was at its minimum in northern Greenland, it greatly increased at El
So, in conclusion, satellites are melting the ice.
Humans could have no greater nor swifter impact on the CO2 balance than the evolution of white-rot fungus. That fungus ended the carboniferous era by evolving a species that could metabolize cellulose. Before then dead trees just sat until they could become coal. When this fungus evolved though, it quickly encompassed the Earth and consumed all of the cellulose available to the depths it could reach, releasing untold billions of tons of C02 and methane into the air before it ran out of readily available cellulose to consume. And that's why coal seams have well-defined borders. White-rot fungus is also why there will be no more coal. Life has found a way to prevent it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Sorry, but AGW is a physical, observable phenomenom, not a prediction of it's possible consequences. Please do try to keep the two as separate issues, otherwise there's a chance that you reject the observation because you don't like one possible consequence prediction...
Or in other words, the 97% agree that AGW is the best explanation for the atmospheric observations scientists have made since the end of the 19th century. 3% disagree, but can't offer any other framework that explains all observations, or can make predictions.
So, in conclusion, satellites are melting the ice.
Darn, I thought the ice was causing the satellites.
Skeptics or no skeptics, harm is still done by human activity. It's just that talk and speculation here is pointless. We can't really do much about it, when CO2 emissions exceed even pessimistic estimates, governmental decisions increase CO2 emissions, nuclear power is removed and replaced with coal power plants. In my mind, the race to limit CO2 emissions is lost, now someone had better figure out how to remove it from the atmosphere...
Take a look at this article about Germany's electricity situation. This is a country where greens have had good success with getting rid of nuclear power, and riding the Fukushima wave. They are starting 25 new coal power plants that are even hyped as "clean" (because they have "high" electrical energy efficiency of 43%).
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/08/31/germany-insane-or-just-plain-stupid/
"We usually give the Germans credit for being rational, but this coal plant will emit over one million times more carbon this year than all of their nuclear plants would have over the next 20 years, and cost over twice as much to run as any one of the them."
There is also some speculation what this rise in the cost of electricity will do to the renewable-support...
Well great. We can assume that human beings can't affect the environment any worse than a fungus that altered that altered the ecosphere beyond all recognition. Hey, that makes me feel a lot better.
BTW, my Googling about WRF (I do thank you for telling me about it) gives me a rather more ambiguous picture than the one you offer. Most science stories describe it as "an interesting theory" but not yet universally accepted. I admit that it's a really plausible theory, but not one you can cite with such religious certainty.
They're in it together.
rewriting history since 2109
You first.
That is the problem. Everyone wants *everyone else* to deal with. As long as they can still drive to work with cheap gas and get a shiny new smart phone every year, its clearly other peoples real problem... if only they would deal with it right?
So what are you doing to deal with it?
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Yep, despite what the psuedo-skeptics would have you believe the IPCC is actually very conservative with it's claims. Which is precisely what you would expect when trying to get a large number of experts to agree on a statement. Another point to note is that not a single one of the 2-3,000 scientists get a dime for their work from the IPCC. The organization has $5-6 million budget which comes from donations by over 120 different nations representing ALL the colours of the political rainbow. Most of that is spent on airfares and conference rooms and the accounts are available for inspection on their web site.
The incredibly robust review process of the IPCC should be held up as an outstanding example of how science should inform policy. The partially successful assassination of it's character by Luddites in the coal industry should be held up as an outstanding example of how easy it is convince people to work against their own best interest with nothing more than cheap, transparent, propaganda.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
As a side note from just across the strait here in Iceland, it's been abnormally warm this summer. Was kind of shocking, the peak of Snæfellsjökull (visible from Reykjavík on a clear day) showed through the ice cap. It's never happened before in recorded history. I mean, it was one thing when Iceland got a new tallest waterfall because of the retreating glaciers in Skaftafell, but to see a mountain whose name literally translates as "Snow Mountain" lose so much that its peak became visible... they're saying that at the current rate it's losing ice, the entire glacier will be gone in 20-30 years, and all of Iceland's glaciers in 150-200 years. Just crazy when you think about it, given that one of Iceland's glaciers alone is the largest in Europe by volume and takes up nearly 10% of the country.
Alanis, you oughta know: she's older than you, more mature than you, and can show some restraint in a theater
For some reason, "alarmists" seem a lot more willing to put their money where their mouth is than "skeptics". So far, they have also won a lot more on it.
Because skeptics are um skeptical. There are many of us who don't adopt a position of belief on this subject. Its clear the climate is changing. Its also clear there is lots we don't know about how the system works, and its not entirely clear where things are headed and its even less clear that its man made.
I am not saying it is not man made. It very well might be! I don't want to put money down that its not. I also don't want to adopt economically ruinous measures; on the possibility it is. I want to let the scientists do more science. That is really not an extreme position. Especially when its already to late to fix the problem by 'controlling emissions' if our current level of understanding does turn out to be mostly correct. The focus should be on enhancing our understanding of the climate model and figuring out how we might directly and actively control it.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I work on coal-bearing forests in the Carboniferous (yeah, yeah, saying "in" is standard geology terminology -- I don't *actually* have a time machine), and this is the first I've heard of any type of fungus being responsible for that much change. There is a big change globally in climate as you go from the Carboniferous Period (named such because of the abundance of coal) into the Permian Period. The climate generally becomes more arid. But this is thought to be related to the development of Pangaea and the whole-hemisphere ocean on the other side of it, Panthalassa, not some transformation of forest terrains due to evolution of a new fungus. For that matter, there *are* coals in the Permian, but they are located in places such as India and Australia that people may not be as familiar with. There is also plenty of coal in rocks of all ages from the Carboniferous onward, although it's global abundance does wax and wane with global climate. For example, coal is particularly abundant in the Cretaceous Period and in the Eocene, both times of "greenhouse" conditions. It's less common in, say, the Triassic, which like the Permian has more widespread arid conditions (Pangaea was still breaking up). Coal is forming today as peat in many parts of the world. I have no doubt that the evolution of fungus that could metabolize cellulose was an important event, but it did not result in the end of coal.
How much of it would have happened anyway?
If we are talking since 1900, none of it according to the best models, if anything the globe would have very slightly cooled. The official IPCC position is more conservative and simply states that "most" of the observed warming is due to our activity (it's the second point in the much maligned 3 point scientific consensus)
rant/
A good place to start looking for more detailed answers on sun cycles and volcanos is here, and the youtube channel "climate crock of the week" is also a good place to visit for quality investigative journalism on the subject, (warning it includes strong British sarcasm). But for god's sake don't take my word for it, trusting a single source in the minefield of disinformation on climate science is quite likely to be fatal to your understanding of the issue. WP (or any other reputable encyclopedia) is also a good place to start, and it's hard to go past realclimate.org, it's run by Michael Mann (the hockey stick guy) and features articles and commentary by some of the world's leading climatologists. sourcewatch.org also has an extensive database of front groups, shills and lobbyists who publish climate misinformation, making it relatively simple for a genuine skeptic to work out who is bullshitting them and why. Make no mistake, if your interested in truth these "lobbyists" are your enemy, they will attempt to recruit you into the dwindling ranks of their army of useful idiots they have extensive propoganda experience that has been refined since the days the same people were paid to disrcedit medical science that said smoking causes cancer, somewhat surprisingly such expertise is cheap, (as well as fucking nasty).
/rant
Disclaimer: Unlike the so called "climate change skeptics" I want you to be skeptical of what I say and who I recommend. I've been following the science as an interested layman now for 30yrs, I want you to constructively attack the evidence I'm leaning on because (as a grandfather of three) the issue is way too important to allow the mediocrity you speak of in your sig to waste time and sow doubt amongst the uninformed.
A final bit of good faith advice (Aussie style) - Do you fucking homework mate, your ignorance.is your enemy's most effective weapon.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Its clear the climate is changing. Its also clear there is lots we don't know about how the system works, and its not entirely clear where things are headed and its even less clear that its man made.
I am not saying it is not man made. It very well might be! I don't want to put money down that its not.
As the comic says, what if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
No it's more like, your house is 20 degrees warmer today than it was 8 months ago in the depths of winter. Clearly this is your fault and with that trend, by 2020 it will be uninhabitable! You better dedicate half your income to air conditioning so that the average temperature in the summer equals the average temperature in the winter, because you picked an arbitrary point and never want it to change from there.