Record Ice Loss in Arctic 2008

Dan1195 · Heavy Crude Joined: Mar 19, 2005 Posts: 262

With all the first year ice out there now, you have a situation right now where the current extent is slightly higher than last year, but the thickness is overall less across the entire ice pack. At this point it all comes down to the weather patterns over the summer months. Either you have a rapid meltdown or it remains cool enough to keep the "domino effect" from getting rolling. I do not see much of a middle ground here.

biofuel13

GregWatson--

Keep these animations coming every few days! They're great!

eric_b

Hi all --
I'm the one that started the 'original' thread on ice loss in the arctic last year. I've been keeping an eye on satellite weather imagery for years now, before it became fashionable to do so.

Wanted to say I think y'all are being a bit premature trying to judge the coming minimum - wait until August or September for that! There's no need to spam the thread with pictures quite yet, just post a link to the site. The place I go to look at sea ice - and have been for years - is here:
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/seaice/Analyses.html
Includes a 30 day animation.

While I do think 'climate change' caused by human activities is the cause of the dramatic ice loss, it's hard to say if it's being indirectly caused by increasing CO2 levels or not. There's some evidence that dramatically increasing levels of pollution in the NH (primarily from China building scores of new coal fired plants) is causing soot and other particulate pollution to slightly change the albedo of the ice, accelerating the melt. Who knows.

It would be interesting to see if sulphur dioxide levels have changed much over the past 5 years or so, as it has a cooling effect.

dohboi · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 1274

Thanks for the great link, eric.

There were two massive, sudden melting events last year--one, as you say, occurred late in the summer, but the other occurred right about now. That's why I, at least, have been looking warily at the ice extent nearly daily right now. But you are certainly right that we are very unlikely to set a new record till much later in the year. I find it kind of surprising--but not quite comforting yet--that a really massive melt hasn't gotten going in earnest yet.

Your point about soot is almost certainly right. I have seen more references about this regarding Greenland ice melt than Arctic, but I can't imagine that it would affect one without the other. Within the melting season, any black particles accumulated in the snow over the winter play a feedback roll in accelerating melting--as the snow melts from the heat absorbed by the dark particles on the surface, more particles are exposed further heating the snow whose melt reveals yet more particles....

That, of course, does not mean that CO2 isn't playing a roll here. I think of the underlying GW as the platform that raises the temperatures enough that things like increased particles can play a much more dramatic roll above that already raised level.

My understanding from discussions over at Realclimate and elsewhere is that sulfur aerosols from Chinese coal plants are powerful players in global dimming, masking up to two degrees Celsius of warming we would otherwise see. Basically, if the Chinese adopted US level standards for particulate and sulfur controls out of their coal-fired plants, the earths temperature would increase dramatically withing about six months (the time it takes for for such aerosols to fall out of the atmosphere).

In other words, as bad as things are with the increases in severe weather events from gw, given the masking of this global dimming, relatively speaking we are living in a kind of fool's paradise (not to be confused with an Amish paradise). Rolling Eyes

KevO · Expert Joined: May 24, 2005 Posts: 2358

this is dire news. It is accelerating and the extra refectivity will in turn melt Greenland at an accelerated rate. So if you live below 22 feet above sea level, in other words, Florida, NYC, London, Holland et al etc - then get out now. You may only have 3 or 4 years before the refugee rush away from these areas. Inundation will be human as well as wet

Valdemar

KevO · Expert Joined: May 24, 2005 Posts: 2358

dorlomin · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Aug 05, 2007 Posts: 1063

Map (large)

Chart (large)

dohboi · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 1274

Well, it is now the longest day of the year and the official start of summer, and the "tale of the tape" chart over at Cryosphere Today shows a significant fall off in ice coverage starting. This is right in line with what happened last year about this time: a major drop, then a pause for a month or so, then a further gut-wrenching drop to levels far below any minimum seen to date.

CT The accumulated heat is sure to keep melting going pretty steadily at this point.

A particularly disturbing development to me is the rapid collapse of the Beauford Sea ice (as dorlomin's excellent image shows), far faster than last year (as the charts at CT again show). As I recall, this is just where the majority of the clathrates closest to the surface reside. Could a few months of warming water start the great burp we've all been dreading? Could the rapic clearing in this area indicate that things are already starting to bubble up?

I don't know about two or three years, but the Greenland ice is definitely going to see acceleration of melt because of the same feed backs from soot and other particulates, and of course, because the giant air conditioner known as the Arctic Polar Cap will soon be gone. Once these types of feed backs get going, it becomes very difficult to model accurately, as far as I've heard.

dissident · Heavy Crude Joined: Apr 08, 2006 Posts: 421

You are right dohboi, climate models do not have all of the potential feedback processes parameterized. Up until recently they had very primitive glacier and sea ice models (basically glorified ice cubes without the sub-grid scale breakdown of cracks and water erosion). Clathrates, permafrost and forest decay are simply not there in these models. But for all their issues they have been pointing us in the right direction for a long time while paid deniers have been trying to herd the world into the business as usual black hole.

arretium

Niagara

Smudger

truecougarblue · Heavy Crude Joined: Dec 21, 2005 Posts: 471

What about the volume of water floating above sea level due to this bouyancy? That amount should add to mean ocean levels.
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Cougar

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