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The Arctic Sets Yet Another Record Low Maximum Extent (nsidc.org)

Posted by msmash on from the tracking-climate-change dept.

Layzej writes: Arctic sea ice was at a record low maximum extent for the second straight year, according to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA. This year's maximum extent is 1.12 million square kilometers below the 1981 to 2010 average of 15.64 million square kilometers. Ice extent increases through autumn and winter, and the maximum typically occurs in mid-March. Sea ice then retreats through spring and summer and shrinks to its smallest or minimum extent typically by mid-September. Ice melt in the region is reducing the transport of warm southern waters brought north by the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). "Some studies suggest that decreased heat flux of warm Atlantic waters could lead to a recovery of all Arctic sea ice in the near future," said NSIDC senior research scientist Julienne Stroeve. "I think it will have more of a winter impact and could lead to a temporary recovery of winter ice extent in the Barents and Kara seas."

19 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. No amount of evidence is enough by PvtVoid · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It really doesn't matter how much compelling evidence continues to pile up that global warming is an imminent threat, deniers will continue to deny. If I believed in an afterlife, I would sincerely hope that those choosing inaction would spend eternity hearing the cries of the billions who will suffer as a consequence. But there will be no such luck.

    1. Re:No amount of evidence is enough by avandesande · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem isn't the science behind warming it's the ridiculous solutions that are being proposed.

      Kill the ban on breeder reactors in the United States and license French reactor designs. Could be done in 10-15 years and cut our carbon output 50%. Unfortunately there is no political will to do what needs to be done.

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    2. Re:No amount of evidence is enough by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ice very well may come back, and soon. Spare us the hysterics.

      Sure and Jesus very well may come back, and soon. But that's not exactly a strategy, is it?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:No amount of evidence is enough by religionofpeas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem isn't the science behind warming it's the ridiculous solutions that are being proposed.

      The problem is that half the people are denying the science, so we can't even start a proper discussion about any proposal.

    4. Re:No amount of evidence is enough by Smidge204 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, there are roughly 7 billion people on the planet, and even if only a relatively small proportion of them are screwed (realistically, MOST people will be screwed...) it's a safe bet that problems will persist for *many* generations.

      Sea level rise alone stands to displace over a billion people, and that doesn't account for all of the other problems like violent weather and impacts to food and fresh water supplies.

      I don't think "billions" is at all histrionic, or even much of an exaggeration.
      =Smidge=

    5. Re:No amount of evidence is enough by msauve · · Score: 3

      " it's now how science should work. Science allows you to actually reach actionable conclusions about the world. "

      Sure, by following the scientific method. You know, that thing with testable and falsifiable hypotheses, which climate "science" doesn't bother with?

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    6. Re:No amount of evidence is enough by religionofpeas · · Score: 3, Funny

      Folks have a hard time taking serious action based on this especially when we've been hearing "end of humanity within five years" for over a decade.

      You accuse people of hyperbole, and yet you give the worst demonstration I've heard in a million years.

    7. Re:No amount of evidence is enough by hey! · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Billions who will suffer"? This sort of histrionic exaggeration is why no one takes you seriously.

      It seems odd to me that anyone could believe that nobody would suffer if climate changes.

      You can argue that climate isn't changing, although you'd be holding the short end of the evidence stick in that one. You could argue that some people will also benefit from climate change, and that'd even be unquestionably true. But you can't argue that rainfall can shift as much as climate models are predicting without billions of people suffering, both directly from bad harvests and indirectly from the destabilization of the countries they live in.

      If you want to see what that hypothetical situation would look like, look at Syria. The Assads have been ruthlessly but effectively putting down Islamist uprisings for decades, so what was different in 2011 that allowed Al Qaeda in Iraq to metastasize into ISIL? An internal climate refugee crisis touched off by four years of drought-ravaged harvests and a spike in international commodity prices. Across Syria 160 agricultural villages were depopulated, and in some provinces 85% of the livestock perished. This provided ISIL with an army of angry, hungry, unemployed young men ripe for radicalization.

      So really your strongest argument here would be that climate is not changing at all -- that the Syrian was an anomalous weather event and that there won't be more of them in the future (as the models are predicting).

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    8. Re:No amount of evidence is enough by religionofpeas · · Score: 4, Informative

      Correlation is not causation.

      Agreed, but that's a pointless remark, since the mechanism behind CO2 induced warming is well understood on a physical basis. It was already understood more than a century ago, and the global warming effect was already predicted then.

    9. Re:No amount of evidence is enough by ledow · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And quite what are those people saying, for instance? Because there's shockingly little air-time ever given to that.

      Let's say we tax all cars over a certain engine size, applicable to the US. Will that reduce emissions by any noticeable amount? Will that amount recede the ice-caps by anything significantly measurable? Because, pretty much, as far as I can tell the answer is no.

      I'm playing devil's advocate here, but I'm also quite serious. As someone of scientific mind, "What's happening?" is a good question, but not one millionth as interesting as "What does that mean?" and "What are the alternatives?"

      What, precisely, are the listed actions that - if we impose them immediately, world-wide, without anyone trying to find a way around them, would reduce the danger and NOT introduce more problems (e.g. if we taxed ALL cars, would that push people into poverty and/or would it mean that people instead started overcrowding the train systems?). And how feasible is that of ever happening?

      Stop using oil?
      Start taxing it heavily?
      Start rolling, scheduled power-cuts to reduce usage (like the UK did in the 1970's?)?
      Stop the sale of cars, appliances, etc. that are less than super-efficient?

      And how long, if we do all that, do we have to do it for? Centuries? Permanently? Until we spot a difference?

      And, playing absolute devil's advocate, what if we notice NO difference? What if we ban oil-use and nothing changes and we continue to flood the world? What did we gain by doing so? Could we have predicted that? What other mechanisms could be responsible.

      Sorry, but it's really not as simple as "stop buying SUV's". The engine sizes in Europe are tiny compared to the US, so we're already effectively doing what a ban on SUV's in America would do. And it's always been that way. So do we spot differences in emissions? Not really, our scientists are still saying the same as the US scientists. And while China is just burning coal like there's no tomorrow, would/could anything we do actually make a difference if they don't also co-operate?

      I'm being serious here, and have had this conversation many dozens of times online.

      I believe you. NOW WHAT?

    10. Re:No amount of evidence is enough by lucm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Billions who will suffer"? This sort of histrionic exaggeration is why no one takes you seriously.

      It seems odd to me that anyone could believe that nobody would suffer if climate changes.

      The fact that you jump from "billions" to "nobody" is, essentially, what "histrionic exaggeration" means. There's a huge fucking amount of numbers between 0 and >2,000,000,000.

      Just pull out your calculator, for god's sake. There are 7 billions people on the planet at the moment. The odds that at least 25% of them will die (i.e. "billions") because of a projected global increase of 4 Celsius in temperature over a century would require a lot more explanation and hard data than what has been provided so far to be considered anything than ludicrous. Just look at a fucking map and see where the bulk of those 7 billions people live, how the fuck is such a slow change supposed to kill them all?

      This is the kind of bullshit number that people make up as a scare tactic, like"1/3 of women will be raped in their lifetime". It doesn't help take the climate change proponents seriously, it actually make them look like liars to those who are not convinced that there's a problem.

      This kind of tactic is harmful to the cause. The more you try to scare people with end of the world scenarios, the less they listen because this has been tried many times before (acid rains, ozone layer, GMO, etc.) and the world did not end. Only people who respond well to that FUD approach is people who are already convinced, which means it's totally useless.

      Here's the solution:
      1) rebuild the credibility of climate scientists by providing clear, simple data that isn't presented in an alarmist way
      2) stop saying "ample evidence" or "the science is there" or other generic label that may look like you don't know the fuck what the numbers are, otherwise the other side uses the same and nobody knows what the fuck is going on
      3) crunch numbers to show the economical impact of climate change, not just the "billions of death and mayhem and suffering and crying babies" to make the dialogue more inclusive
      4) vote for people who have a balanced, pro-environment agenda, as opposed to shallow rockstars, right/left extremists or obvious frauds
      5) vote with your dollars when it comes to heavy polluters (computers, cars, etc)

      It's not sexy, not cool, not spectacular, it's just fucking common sense, and that's probably why it's not happening. People want drama, so that's what you get.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    11. Re:No amount of evidence is enough by hey! · · Score: 5, Insightful

      World bank projections in agricultural productivity in 2050 show reductions in productivity across the Middle East, Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, Australia and large swaths of North America. This takes into account longer growing seasons and places where rainfall increases. Russia, for example, does extremely well under the warming scenario with longer growing seasons and increased rainfall in currently arid areas.

      The US and Australia being rich countries with relatively low birth rates will be able to import food from places like Russia. But Africa, which current sports a population of 1.1 billion, will have a population of two billion and less food production to feed them. Large areas of India are expected to receive much less rainfall and to be less productive. India currently has a population of 1.2 billion, expected to grow to 1.5 billion.

      Now everyone in these places won't be suffering. India currently boasts a middle class larger than the US middle class. They'll continue to be able to buy food. But they have an enormous underclass who are already living in conditions that are very precarious.

      This is not an alarmist picture. Simple math gets us to the 10^9 benchmark in South Asia alone. That's should be alarming. But it's not hopeless. Even if we can't reduce the rate of the climate change we expect to take place, there are other things we can do, like develop drought-resistant crops, better agricultural technology, etc. The "billions suffering" isn't much of a stretch provided we assume we do nothing to avoid that happening.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  2. Sea ice evolution by Layzej · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This web app shows the evolution of northern and southern hemisphere sea ice evolution over the satellite record. Use left and right to change month. http://phosphorus.github.io/ap...

  3. BEWARE! by Zeromous · · Score: 3, Funny

    Beware, the Tides of March!!!

    --
    ---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
  4. My goodness! by aron1231 · · Score: 3, Informative

    You mean the planet is still warming up (recovering) from an ice age? Inconceivable!

    Fear not gentle denizens, another ice age is coming! Then the faithful climateers will rejoice!

  5. Considerations... by PortHaven · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Arctic vs Antarctic ice
    https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/s...

    http://www.nasa.gov/content/go...

    http://www.climatechangenews.c...

    ***

    The truth is, there have been times when the Earth did not even have polar ice caps. But I have a hypothesis regarding this scenario.

    The orbital plane of earth is slightly lower. Think about it. The Earth's orbit around the sun is not perfect - no celestial body is. Look at the moon sometimes it's higher in altitude and sometimes lower.

    So what if the Earth is slightly lower in altitude of it's planar orbit around the sun? The northern hemisphere would be warmer, ice would melt. The southern hemisphere would experience the opposite, with the antarctic increasing in the accumulation of ice.

    Yet I have seen very little research into this possibility that could pose a valid explanation for Earth's present climate changes.

    ***

    None of this means we shouldn't clean up our act, stop pollution, and move to clean renewable energy. Far beyond CO2, look at the damage coal mining has done to the neighboring environments. Streams poisoned until no life is in them. I think we can ALL agree we need to clean up our act.

  6. Interactive daily diagram of sea ice extent by MarchHare · · Score: 3, Informative

    Personally, I love this diagram. I bookmarked it a couple of years ago and I like to show it to people. Climate change is pretty obvious if you hide all the series and then reveal them one by one in chronological order.

        http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html

    (University of Illinois)

  7. Strangely by argStyopa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...Antarctic ice has been setting maximums.

    Even more curious (to me) are the different responses:
    - Arctic ice is shrinking: CLEARLY THIS IS GLOBAL WARMING.
    - Antarctic ice is growing: (shrug) we really don't have any idea why this is happening I guess we'll just have to figure it out (shrug, again)

    http://www.nasa.gov/content/go...

    When the "record" is only 35 years, 'record setting' really isn't that big a deal.
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

    The opening of the Northeastern passage? A herald of climatological disaster? Well, not so much:
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

    --
    -Styopa
  8. Re:Natual cycles by hey! · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yeah, it's that scientific conspiracy to suppress ideas not supported by evidence.

    It's worth noting that none of the lead authors of the NIPCC reports are climate scientists, except possibly Singer who has a background in remote sensing at least. He's also behind so-called "Leipzig Declaration", which is notorious for (a) misrepresenting the qualifications of many of its signatories (e.g. TV weather presenters) and (b) faking the signatures of actual climate scientists.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.