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witsend at 07:17 AM on 29 August 2012Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
Ridley's loathsome distortions made me so crazy I couldn't do anything when I read it other than click out and hope to forget by any means possible. However I think some of this rebuttal is less than complete. For instance this sentence which I suppose was meant facetiously, but could be construed as a real possibility: "Northern Canada and Siberia may become suitable for agricultural productivity - do we want to move all of our crops to those regions?" Regardless of warming, the soil and topography do not lend themselves to agriculture. As to this: "...nobody suggests that we should immediately cease burning all fossil fuels." Personally, I do - or at least, strict rationing. We've run out of time to wait for "carbon pricing" in the magic economic market or new "green" technologies to make a dent in the warming disaster already in the pipeline. We are in a global emergency and nothing less than drastic curtailment of consumption - serious sacrifice and a drastic reduction in the developed world standard of living will do. If we want to survive, that is. The mass extinctions have already begun...isn't that what the science says? -
DSL at 06:48 AM on 29 August 2012How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?
Well, vroomie, I don't think that argument's going to get any traction. I mean, evidence is where the rubber hits the road. It's been a good year for GW, and we're rapidly turning the planet into a fire stone. This tread is kind of petering out, isn't it? -
william5331 at 06:41 AM on 29 August 2012Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
If you look at http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ there is a curious anomaly, especially when you realize that we have passed the previous record for low ice extent and the the melt is proceeding like an elevator with it's cable cut. Look along the coast and note how much freezing is occurring. Go down on the right of the site and select August for previous years. Much less ice in previous years along the coast. This fits with the hypothesis that we are seeing the beginning of the reversal of the Polar Hadley cell. Air is being pulled off the rapidly cooling land around the Arctic ocean and is freezing coastal water. We probably have a 4 cell system at present. As the Arctic becomes more open, the rising air in the fall from the warmer ocean may be powerful enough to reverse the whole polar cell. We will then have a two cell system. Think what this will do to the wheat growing areas of the northern hemisphere. http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2008/07/arctic-melting-no-problem.html -
Rob Painting at 06:07 AM on 29 August 2012Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
Daved - the loss of ice from the polar regions will have an affect on Earth's rotation - slowing it down. Not that anyone would be able to notice because the effect is so minuscule. Think of an ice skater spinning and then pulling their arms in toward their body - it causes them to spin much faster, and conversely when they straighten out their arms their rate of rotation slows. The same deal applies to the Earth, melting polar ice (near the Earth's axis of rotation) and its redistribution into the ocean (away from the axis of rotation) slows Earth's rotation. As for wobble - it depends where most of the melt occurs, but if the West Antarctic disintegrates (as it has done in previous interglacials), then the Earth wobble will cause a greater-than-global-average sea level rise off the east coast of the USA. -
vrooomie at 05:34 AM on 29 August 2012Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
Daved, short answer?....no. Though the mass of ice is large, it's not nearly large enough to affect the 'wobble' of the earth, nor its tilt. I don't ahve the numbers right here in front of me, but if you're interested, I can scare them up for you. To answer a bit more accurately, yes, there would be an infinitesimal change in the tilt and wobble, but literally *nothing* that would throw the Earth out of kilter. -
dana1981 at 05:17 AM on 29 August 2012Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
BWT @10 - yes, irrespective of caricatures of us, SkS is all about getting the science right :-) The picture still isn't pretty after the update. Basically we're looking at super extreme drought becoming the norm as opposed to super duper extreme drought. -
Daved Green at 05:02 AM on 29 August 2012Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
Will the loss of ice mass in the Arctic and on Greenland affect the tilt and or the wobble of tilt and if so what climate affect if any would there be ? . Thanks -
Nick Palmer at 04:48 AM on 29 August 2012Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
I hate to quote this because it means that I have lost some hope but... Friedrich Schiller: "Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens" which means "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain" -
BWTrainer at 04:45 AM on 29 August 2012Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
Dana @9 - you mean you actually updated your post to correct a figure based on new information, and the update made the situation less dire? But that goes against everything I've been taught by the deniers! I thought climate scientists were a bunch of alarmist, lying criminals trying to scare us all into Communism! Now I don't know what to think. -
dana1981 at 04:28 AM on 29 August 2012Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
JoeT @5 - thanks, I've updated the PDSI figure as well. ralbin @6 - I also agree that regulation tends to drive innovation by increasing demand for low emissions products. -
Composer99 at 04:10 AM on 29 August 2012Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
Even if Ridley was correct about seeing only 1-2°C warming this century, with the warming from the start of the Industrial Revolution to the turn of the century taken into account that brings us to 3°C warming. I don't think I'm going out on any kind of limb by saying that Ridley's projection still leads to disaster. Lukewarmer, indeed! -
vrooomie at 03:54 AM on 29 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
Daved@42: No wukka! I understand *completely* how the culture in which one resides, however 'micro' it may be, can color how one reacts to words, spoken and/or written. I try to take that into consideration, when interpreting comments that otherwise might be taken wrong. We both learned, and isn't that the whole point? -
Ari Jokimäki at 03:47 AM on 29 August 2012New research from last week 34/2012
Thanks for the note, I fixed it. The text editor here has serious problem with smaller than characters having something to do with HTML. I went around the problem simply by writing the character's name instead of using it. Originally I tried to use the HTML name for the character, and that seemed to work, but it seems that problem came back. -
vrooomie at 03:25 AM on 29 August 2012How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?
TC, ModComm@20....what?? Now there's a "tires cause GW" argument? Jk...;=)Moderator Response: TC: I meant "tired", of course, and as you obviously realize. I shall allow the misprint to stand so that your joke can as well. (It is not often I get to start my GW reading in the morning with a chuckle.) -
vrooomie at 03:00 AM on 29 August 2012Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
ralbin@7: I am acutely aware of this, both in its verity and in how those who *hate* regulation are, as you say loathe to admit it. My experience was from many years in the car repair/racing/fabrication business, and through the 70s, when pollution controls were being implemented (and *nobody* knew what they were doing) I saw this very thing occur. Now, we have IC engines, even diesels, which run so clean as to defy belief: heck, ~I~ never believed there would be V8-engined cars that regularly get 30+ mpg, and make in excess of 500 hp. Then there are the numerous other technlogies, such as on coal-fired power plants, that run way cleaner than they did, 30 years ago, directly due to regulation. I firmly believe that had the government not stepped in and forced the issue, we'd all *still* be driving ca. 1965 cars, at least in terms of pollution controls. I also do not recall when the Cuyahoga River last caught fire....pollution regulations, by and large, work as intended. Regulation does indeed drive innovation, and I see the same opportunities in the crisis we face. this "regulation, *always bad*" meme is misguided and dangerous. -
Composer99 at 02:37 AM on 29 August 2012New research from last week 34/2012
The abstract for Wang et al 2012 (paper about Greenland mass balance) seems to be truncated in the OP. -
ralbin at 02:21 AM on 29 August 2012Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
Note the "driven partly by regulation and partly by innovation" statement. Another inaccurate separation. Regulation is often a strong incentive for technological innovation - something people like Ridley are loath to admit. This has been particularly true for pollution abatement. See the work of the excellent historian David Hounshell on this point. -
JoeT at 01:40 AM on 29 August 2012Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
Dana, thanks again for a great article. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you are still using the incorrect data from Dai’s 2010 paper. There was a recent retraction published by UCAR here , in which PDSI values of -20 really should have been more like -10. Recently Dai published a new paper this month in Nature Climate Change with what I guess are improved calculations. This is a critical issue – and as someone said in a very recent post in one of the comments – the key component in all of this is food, food, food. I still would like to see a post that explains the basic physics of drought – and specifically why the US is predicted to become increasingly arid while the Sahel region may actually have increased precipitation. In the post on new research for the last week there is the intriguing paper about Hadley circulation response to the greenhouse. I haven’t had time to look at it, but perhaps someone could inform us whether it sheds some light on what their findings might tell us about drought prediction. Thanks!Moderator Response: [Sph]: Links fixed by request. -
miffedmax at 01:06 AM on 29 August 2012Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
vroomie, I think you're right, and you're overlooking one other important factor--the economics are finally turning against them, too. We've already seen a drop in CO2 output this year as natural gas replaces coal based purely on cost, and renewables are becoming cheaper and more efficient every year. Technologies like solar shingles and miniturbines are becoming more cost-effective and will be more widely available in coming years. The only question is which governments will be subsidizing the research to make these products more affordable--will I be buying American, or Korean or German or Chinese products in 2022? -
r.pauli at 00:56 AM on 29 August 2012New research from last week 34/2012
You might want to let people know the gentle humor of your reference to the number 42. It comes from the book "Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy" where the answer to everything is 42. Also found elsewhere. -
rousim at 00:55 AM on 29 August 2012New research from last week 34/2012
hahaha love the hitchhikers -
Lionel A at 00:37 AM on 29 August 2012Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
To think I once purchased and read a book by Ridley where another reviewer also found political bias.So overall, an enjoyable, interesting, and informative book, however the more I became aware of the authors tendency to dress his own political agenda up as scientific fact, the more I began to question the perhaps misleading perspective on the subject that the book may be giving.
Yes Ridley does have an agenda one displayed more strongly in 'The Rational Optimist'. -
Daniel J. Andrews at 00:36 AM on 29 August 2012Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
His part on acid rain effects on forests and lakes had me wondering what studies he was cherry-picking. I suspect he was looking at forests and lakes on more alkaline soils which neutralized some of the effects of rain. Up in Canada on the Canadian shield in the east, our soils are already naturally acidic with very little buffering capacity. They did sustain damage, and a large number of our lakes died. Plus the extra acidity leached mercury from the rocks/soil into the lakes so any fish still in the lakes were high in mercury content. Some of our most heavily effected lakes still haven't recovered. And in extreme cases where localized pollution made the rain even more acidic (Sudbury, for e.g.) the vegetation disappeared. Even with the regreening effort, you can still tell this area has been heavily effected (small stunted trees, small birch trees with many dying limbs). -
vrooomie at 00:07 AM on 29 August 2012Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
MOTS. All we can hope is, this recent uptick in desperate dispersion of lies, half-truths, and logical fallacies in the denialosphere (aided and abetted by the near-worthless media) is a sign that recent climate events, plus the ever-growing support of climate change viz. AGW, is driving the denialists into ever-increasingly weird and tin foil-hatted tomfoolery. Give'em the rope with which to hoist themselves. Science moves forward....let's hope that rate of increase is ever slightly greater than the increase of folks like Ridley. -
vrooomie at 23:25 PM on 28 August 2012The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change
Michael sweet@11: my suggestion for 8 sigma? KYAG. Said in other words, we're *done,* as in, stick a fork in humanity. -
vrooomie at 23:11 PM on 28 August 2012Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
DB@62.....*yikes*. -
johnm33 at 23:07 PM on 28 August 2012Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
Bob Loblaw That's a great graph look forward to the update. -
Bob Lacatena at 23:03 PM on 28 August 2012Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
Excellent response, Daniel. That's what people need to see. Not graphs that they need to abstractly interpret, but images like these that make the truth of the matter fairly plain. Really? Christy was comparing (in words) 1938 to 2012? Really? -
Daniel Bailey at 22:31 PM on 28 August 2012Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
The head-to-head comparative: Arctic Sea Ice Extent August 1938:
[Source]
Arctic Sea Ice Extent August 2012:
[Source]
Comparable?
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FrankD at 21:56 PM on 28 August 2012Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
Dave123 @ 21, Danske Meteorologiske Institut published a series of annual reports on arctic sea ice covering most years from 1893 to 1956. The link has one folder per year, with each containing individual pages (month identified by the trailing digit) and the whole annual report (about 5 meg each). Just referring to August extent... Its true that ice extent was lower in the 1930s than it had been in the preceding 30 years. In particular, 1938 saw a dramatic reduction from the previous years - it was probably 1.4 M km^2 below the then long term average and maybe 0.6 M km^2 below the already low years in the late 30's (carefully measured using Eyeball, Mk I). But then we see something of a recovery, with extent returning to close to climatology in 1939 and 1946. Unfortunately we don't have measurements for 1940 to 1945, due to the Second Great Unpleasantness. So, it is fair to say there were some big melts in the 30's. But Christy's false equivalence is an epic fail - "similar melts" is pretty nice weasel-wording for mine. 1.4 M km^2 below recent climatology? Considered like that, 1938 was like 2010, I guess. But in absolute terms, August 1938 extent was much greater (4 M km^2?) than today. So any attempt to conflate the two is...well...I can['t think of an adjective suitable for polite company. Taking the Kinnard graphic - the 1930's "similar melt" is the second last dip on the graph, the first decline with modern observational data. This saw a return to "normal" after a peak that had seen the greatest extents in 500 years. Compared to the current decline on Kinnard (even without "enhancement")? Well, even on Sesame Street they could tell you when one of these things was not like the other... -
CBDunkerson at 21:51 PM on 28 August 2012Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
Eric wrote: "Your first link is the most meaty. implicating AA, not low sea ice per se." Erm... arctic amplification (presumably what your 'AA' refers to) is caused by low sea ice. Temperatures increase... ice melts... water absorbs more sunlight... temperatures increase more. Arctic amplification. Ditto the polar vortex... which is caused by the low temperature at the pole. Arctic temperatures increasing at a faster rate than the rest of the planet (from Arctic amplification... from low sea ice... from AGW) means a lower temperature differential and therefor weaker polar vortex. In short, you are drawing 'distinctions' between things which are all intimately related. -
CBDunkerson at 21:41 PM on 28 August 2012Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
I assumed the area shown in the photo was the mass of ice which got separated from the main pack. Traces of that are actually still showing up on the satellite maps, and back on the 20th it was still fairly substantial. Most of the continued decline has been due to this large area of widely scattered ice continuing to melt out. Which is an important thing to consider about the ongoing declines... the lower the ice concentration the faster the ice melts. This is why the ice pack usually only has a low concentration around the edges. Once the concentration drops below a certain level the ice quickly melts and the solid pack behind it becomes the new edge... until that spreads out enough to melt down. There is thus a 'buffering' effect which protects the core ice pack. The storm at the beginning of the month scattered ice far and wide and thus removed this buffering effect for a large portion of the ice pack... allowing remarkably fast melt for August. As we see more storms and greater wave action from a more ice free Arctic this process will just continue to accelerate. Another note... the maps show that essentially 100% of the first year ice melted out this year. I don't know if that has ever happened before, but it certainly isn't common. Indeed, almost all of the second year ice is gone too... and a good portion of the remainder is very thin and broken up. This means that the multi-year ice is nearly the only ice which survived this year... and not all of that either. Further, even though the remaining mutli-year ice has been largely protected from being broken up by wave and storm action by the 'buffer' of younger ice around it this year... it is still thinning from warmer air and water temperatures. We can see this in the ongoing decline of ice volume. PIOMAS shows that maximum ice volume at the end of Winter has declined almost as much as minimum ice volume (despite area/extent being little changed). This suggests the possibility of a continuing trend leading to no ice year round in future decades as Steve L alluded to. -
Bob Lacatena at 21:38 PM on 28 August 2012Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
Eric, Here's a link to 1,390 papers containing "arctic" and "jet stream" published since 2009. -
Eric (skeptic) at 20:36 PM on 28 August 2012Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
Sphaerica, I just added to this thread /weird-weather-march-madness.html where I addressed the topic of causes of blocking events. -
Eric (skeptic) at 20:31 PM on 28 August 2012Weird Winter - March Madness
I'm adding a little to this thread and a pointer from another thread, not to suggest that I have all the answers of what causes "weird" weather, more specifically high amplitude patterns in winter, but to show that there are more substantial theories than "low sea ice". Here's a description on the phenomenon: Breaking Planetary Waves in the Stratosphere One possible explanation: Effects of Solar UV Variability on the Stratosphere which I must again stress is not the explanation. At best it is part of an explanation. -
Eric (skeptic) at 19:39 PM on 28 August 2012Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
Thanks for the links Sphaerica. I had read a few papers over the last few years about the potential link between low sea ice and blocking. They mostly seemed to derive from a paper around 2006 describing some simulation results. I don't think those results are well established even now, a few years later. Your comment that my paper is dated is true, and it is also true that there was more sea ice back then so some effects may not have been present. However it is also true that the low sea ice to blocking link was not anticipated or predicted before around 2005/6. As a relatively new concept, it must be treated with skepticism particularly since it coincides with a very low solar minimum which is another possible source for blocking patterns. Your first link is the most meaty. implicating AA, not low sea ice per se. AA may well reduce the polar jet since it reduces the N-S temperature contrast. I think that is a pretty well supported theory but I'm not sure of the magnitude of the linkage. Your second link is less supportive of the low sea ice theory. It describes the relationship between the polar vortex and the Rossby waves, not relating them to other factors like low sea ice. Essentially the breaking of the waves can but not always lead to blocking and the subsequent effects described in the OP. Your third link is too short to evaluate. I'll look for a better and more recent paper to support my view of the RW breaking and their causes. -
Dave123 at 15:56 PM on 28 August 2012Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
Here is another paper cited by a denialist to mean that we saw current levels of ice free from 1920-1940. I supposed I could look up the routes indicated and show this was all bunk....but I thought I'd ask if anyone had seen it before: http://mclean.ch/climate/Arctic_1920_40.htm -
Bob Lacatena at 13:56 PM on 28 August 2012CO2 effect is saturated
176, desertphile,Is there any scientist out there who believes Earth's atmosphere is CO2 saturated?
Climate scientist? No. I'm sure you'll be able to find some physicists and such, even ones of great stature in their own fields, who will subscribe to such insanity, but not any climate scientists. Not even the likes of Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen or Roger Pielke, Sr. [I won't link to discussions proving that Lindzen or Pielke believe in the greenhouse effect, because [snip] Suffice to say, no, not even serious deniers like Spencer, Lindzen or Pielke will destroy their own reputations that completely by ascribing to "CO2 is saturated"[snip] People who buy into lame points of view like that are either in serious denial or so thoroughly lost in the depth of the science that you can't possibly educate them.]Moderator Response: TC: Inflammatory snipped. -
Bob Lacatena at 13:45 PM on 28 August 2012Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
54, Eric, No, it's not speculative. The paper you link to, while not at all invalid, is somewhat old (11 years). There has been considerably more work done in the field. In particular, it is less speculative because the changes to the Arctic are actually happening now, so they can study what is happening versus what they project will happen. Here are just three from 2012: Evidence Linking Arctic Amplification to Extreme Weather in Mid-Latitudes Dynamical Evolution of North Atlantic Ridges and Poleward Jet Stream Displacements Arctic melt leads to weather extremes -
Bob Lacatena at 13:33 PM on 28 August 2012Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
Steve L, It's hard to get a clear satellite shot, because there are always a lot of clouds, but the most recent clear shot I found of Barrow was 8/13, and it shows a ton of ice. This less clear but more recent shot from 8/23 has a lot of clouds but you can see the area around Barrow, and a whole lot of ice at sea there. The thing is, from the satellite images you can clearly see that this is below 15%, and yet it is still a lot of ice from a navigation point of view (and possibly/probably exemplary of the picture in the post above. from the deck of the Coast Guard ship -- but it's hard to say exactly where that ship was when the picture was taken). This year is a little unusual because ice has been hanging around the coast of Alaska, despite the extreme melt. This in turn has been messing up Shell Oil's plans to do exploratory drilling there. Whatever the cause, it may be an anomaly associated with this year, or one that will become a recurring pattern as part of "today's Arctic" (at least for a few years, since I think the Arctic is going to keep changing at warp speed until it reaches a bizarre, stable, ice-free state). -
Eric (skeptic) at 12:09 PM on 28 August 2012Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
This part The heat and moisture that are then released to the atmosphere in fall and winter could be leading to disturbances of the jet stream, the high-altitude wind that separates warm air to its south from cold air to the north. A destabilized jet stream becomes more 'wavy', allowing frigid air to plunge farther south... is very speculative. The jet has an effect on ice, for example described here Response of Sea Ice to the Arctic Oscillation. They note an effect in both directions, from thin ice to AO and vice versa, but mostly the latter. According to the paper, we should see thin and decreased ice this year after a relatively positive AO last winter. That's the same result as after the winter of 2006/7 with similarly positive AO. -
desertphile at 11:06 AM on 28 August 2012CO2 effect is saturated
For the past six days I have seen a few denialists on alt.global-warming insisting atmospheric CO2 has reached saturation point 12 years ago. At least one denialist has shown signs of hysteria over the issue, when his cherished "smoking gun" assertion gets corrected and evidence is given to him that his assertion is false. (It's like a Scientology customer learning L. Ron Hubbard's real biography; or like a Christian Scientist, who believes his legs don't really exist, trying to walk on a broken ankle.) Is there any scientist out there who believes Earth's atmosphere is CO2 saturated? -
Bob Loblaw at 10:55 AM on 28 August 2012Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
ranyl: I'll be wondering what the graph looks like in a week, too. If I get a chance, I'll update it as time goes on. -
Daniel Bailey at 10:52 AM on 28 August 2012Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
I believe I understood what SW was referring to. But perhaps my unfinished thought didn't fully come across. If the summer ice is disappearing per Maslowski's model, then what is the likelihood that seasonal ice would still persist until another 8-9 decades? Eisenman & Wettlauffer, 2008: Non-linear Arctic Ice Threshold Behavior examined the non-linear dynamics of the Arctic in the presence of seasonal ice. What they found is that the ice, once seasonal ice is lost and heating continues, behaves in a nonlinear fashion with a bifurcation state existing. Translated, this means that the Arctic system either supports a full-ice, or a no-ice, solution as a stable state. If what we are witnessing is indeed the loss of the full-ice stable state, then Eisenman & Wettlauffer come into play. Given that we are in the presence of an energy imbalance at the TOA that is ongoing (plus we continue to make this imbalance worse with continuing CO2 releases) then the transition to a no-ice stable state may be swifter than any current model (even Maslowski's) can represent. -
Steve L at 10:17 AM on 28 August 2012Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
DB: I believe SW was referring to year-round ice free rather than just at Summer minimum. I have a question about the photo for the blog post -- I would have expected (from looking at the summaries of satellite data)there to be pretty much zero sea ice Northwest of Barrow on Aug 20. Sailboats zipped through both Arctic passages in 2010, I think, and I would expect ice like that in the picture to potentially impede them. I guess I'm wondering if there's a good source of images that allow one to learn to interpret satellite data (e.g. <15% sea ice) in terms of what it actually looks like when you're there. -
Riduna at 09:53 AM on 28 August 2012Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
It will be interesting to see trends in the level of decline in the volume of sea ice and growth in the area covered by 1 year ice. These measures could provide an indication of the speed and magnitude of future sea ice loss. Present indications are that by mid-September 2012 the extent of sea-ice could be below 4 million sq.km. which would certainly be food for thought, particularly for those “skeptics” who deny sea ice loss. Of immediate concern is growth in the area of the Arctic Ocean exposed to and absorbing, rather than reflecting solar energy. It seems likely that this could contribute to warming of sea water and troposphere which reduces the period when sea ice is formed and the Greenland Ice Sheet remains stable. -
Daniel Bailey at 09:44 AM on 28 August 2012Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
Hi, SW!"If the modellers are right - and so far they have consistently underestimated the rate of melt - this will mean that by the end of the century we will have moved from a permanently ice covered ocean to one which is permanently ice free."
Well, that's not exactly right. Based on data through 2005, Wieslaw Maslowski predicted in March of 2006 that the Arctic sea ice could essentially by ice-free (less than 1 million square kilometers) by 2016 ± 3 years (Slide 6, here). A more topical discussion of his model can be found here. This model prediction is still on-target, as events we witness today attest. -
Sceptical Wombat at 09:05 AM on 28 August 2012Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
Oops - I got confused between the area that Hudson Bay drains and the area of the Bay itself. So I rather overstated the case. Nonetheless the reduction in Sea Ice is massive. -
ranyl at 08:59 AM on 28 August 2012Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
Bob Loblaw, Thanks for that worrying but really good graphic of what seems to be a clear change. And 2012 hasn't been an optimal melt year either in terms of weather patterns. Wonder what this graph will look like in a week's time? There still seems to be a lot of warm water arround and the ice is very thin apparently. Wonder what this will do to the weather in the months to come? -
Sceptical Wombat at 08:31 AM on 28 August 2012Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
When looking at ice cover during the satellite period I think we miss the big picture. Whaling records since 1880 together with aircraft and submarine records during the cold war make it pretty clear that prior to 1960 arctic sea ice extent never got below 8 million square km. The area of the Arctic Ocean including Hudson Bay is 14 million square km. Hudson bay accounts for about 4 million of these and has (at least since Europeans have been observing it) always been seasonally ice free. This implies that the vast majority of the rest of the Arctic Ocean was permanently ice covered We are rapidly moving to a situation where this will only be true for parts of the Canadian Archipelago and the North coast of Greenland. If the modellers are right - and so far they have consistently underestimated the rate of melt - this will mean that by the end of the century we will have moved from a permanently ice covered ocean to one which is permanently ice free. The mind boggles at what this may mean for NH weather.
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