The European Space Agency's ENVISAT satellite captures the Arctic's shrinking summer sea ice in August. The red boundary outlines the ice boundary at the end of the melt season in 2007. It was the largest loss of summer ice on record. (ESA photo)
Now you see it, now you don’t (nearly as much)
By Peter N. Spotts | 08.28.08
It’s getting down to the wire: Will the Arctic ice cap’s annual melt-off this year top last year’s record?
In one sense, it’s a trivial “horse race” question, because at this point in the summer, stats for the two years are sufficiently close and low to arch eyebrows yet again within the Arctic science community — already out in force as part of the International Polar Year, which runs through next March.
So far, this year’s decline has ensured that 2008 will at least rank as the second lowest year on record for summer sea-ice extent at the top of the world. Where Arctic scientists once spoke of virtually ice-free summers by 2070, and more recently by 2040, “the Arctic could be mainly ice free even earlier,” according to Heinrich Miller, an Arctic scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, in an ESA press release that accompanied the satellite images.
“Some notables had suggested ‘08 sea ice would probably not be another record-breaker or even close. What’s going on up there now suggests the situation is indeed serious,” writes Jonathan Overpeck, director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Arctic science is one of its specialties.
The data on the Arctic ice cap come from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The European Space Agency chipped in today with a short “flip book” movie using images from its ENVISAT earth-observation satellite. Another useful website for taking part in Ice Watch 2008 lives at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It’s dubbed The Cryosphere Today.
And the concerns extend beyond polar bears and caribou. For instance, David Lawrence, with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., published a study in the June 13 issue of Geophysical Research Letters suggesting that as the Arctic Ocean loses more of its reflective summer ice and the darker ocean captures more of the sun’s warmth, those warmer waters can moderate temperatures over land as far as 900 miles inland. It’s somewhat analogous to the Gulf Stream’s effect on Europe’s climate. Not surprisingly, during periods of rapid loss of sea ice, the modeling study suggested that temperatures over land would warm 3.5 times more than warming rates global climate models typically project for the 21 century. This additional warming could affect the amount of permafrost that melts, releasing CO2 and methane, the team noted.
Meanwhile, the loss of summer ice will open shipping lanes long dreamed of by many maritime countries. And it’s already setting off a scramble for claims to natural resources under the UN Law of the Sea Treaty.
What’s driving the Arctic to shed it’s summer ice like this? Two major players, researchers say: Weather, and warmer water working its way into the ocean and under the ice from lower latitudes. These are reinforced by a shrinking amount of thick, multi-year ice, which serves as a foundation for the next winter’s freeze. When the next spring arrives more of the existing ice is too thin to survive the spring and summer melt. But even the weather patterns feeding the trend look to have a climate-change connection, notes Joellen Russel, another University of Arizona researcher. She explains that in 2004, scientists at the University of Washington published work that tied heavy declines in sea ice to a mode of natural variation variously dubbed the Arctic Oscillation or the Northern Annular Mode. Essentially, when this mode gets stuck in overdrive, it strengthens prevailing-wind patterns in the Arctic in ways that help flush ice out into the North Atlantic. Other groups have since linked late-20th century trends toward this mode’s more-muscular phase to global warming, perhaps with some help from an ozone hole that periodically sets up over the Arctic.
This year’s great melt-off watch triggered something a tempest earlier this month when a blogger in Britain said he’d found a significant problem with the NSIDC’s data that led the center to overestimate the melt-back. It triggered a round of hot bytes hurtling back and forth in the yes-it-is, no-it-isn’t climate blogosphere. But said blogger retracted his conclusion after an NSIDC scientist pointed out the flaw in his analysis. The blogger now acknowledges that the NSIDC analysis is correct.
Note: Eoin O’Carroll is on vacation. He will return Sept. 2
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2. El Gabilon | 08.30.08
To answer the question…yes they will. Further humanity is in for a big shock. Throughout the United States lakes are shrinking. In Africa one of the largest lakes in the world has shrunk by 96 percent. The earth is entering a cycle of warmth, but at a faster rate than normal due to green house gasses created by humanity. As the oceans warm red algie will increase producing a deadly gas that will rise from the ocean float over the land and kill most living creatures. A smaller effect such as this can be seen in Africa where people have walked towards lakes and died because of the gas eminating from the lakes. Tornadoes and Hurricanes will increase in force. Droughts will increase and food shortages will arise partly because farmable land is being sacraficed for development of housing. At the present time the rain forests of Brazil are being destroyed at more than a football field size destroying one of the greatest climate producers in the world. For years the worlds oil industry has prevented the development of vehicles that would do little or no harm to the atmosphere, and are still at it helping to hasten the extinction of the human race. The voices of doom were ignored in the name of profit and when the North and South poles ice caps, along with the accumulation of snow in the mountains is gone water shortages that have already begun will increase in intensity and in some nations the skeletons of humans will litter the earth. Then will our posterity see the wisdom of placing the philosophy of “caring for the garden” over the “accumulation of wealth”. Humans have been given for whatever reason the ability to “choose”. The question is why do humans always seem to make the wrong choices.
3. jeff id | 08.30.08
We have two ice caps, the antarctic cap has grown. This melting has happened numerous times throughout history and will continue to happen whether we like it or not. The “ice core” data demonstrates quite clearly that temperatures over the last 5000 years have been both hotter and colder than now. This melt in the arctic is a local effect and in no way implies man made climate change.
For more information on how the world governments have corrupted the science go to http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2008/08/30/ten-things-everyone-should-know-about-climate-change-science/
4. Mike | 08.31.08
Excellent point, jeff id! I also appreciated the link, which crisply summarizes indisputable facts about the IPCC.
For those advocating for human-based global warming, I invite you to post any link that shows empirical evidence that increased CO2 in the atmosphere is linked to global warming. The scientific evidence simply does not exist.
On the other hand, significant scientific evidence disputes this theory.
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLkze-9GcI that convincing disproves human-based global warming.
5. BlackbirdHighway | 09.01.08
Chris, you claim that the world cooled since 198, but 2005 and 2007 were both hotter than 1998. You are totally and completely wrong.
Calling NASA the “looney left” makes your right wing bias quite obvious. I suppose next you will cite the “scientific evidence” of a 30 year old Newsweek article in a dismally sad attempt to make some sort of point.
6. Mike | 09.01.08
Satellite data for the past 30 years, which is generally regarded as the most accurate measure of the Earth’s temperature, supports the claim that the world has cooled since 1998.
See http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3354 for details.
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1. Chris | 08.29.08
Is the summer solstice (approx June 21) the warmest day of the year? No it’s later in the summer. In similar fashion the warmest season of this warming cycle is likely to be after the causation factor is over. Lets remember the fact that even the loony left at NASA has acknowledged that the Earth’s temperature had stopped rising in 1998 and has decreased since then. I’m so sorry for the inconvenient truth.