Video:This animation shows the 2012 time-series of ice extent using sea ice concentration data from the DMSP SSMI/S satellite sensor. The black area represents the daily average (median) sea ice extent over the 1979-2000 time period. Layered over top of that are the daily satellite measurements from January 1 -- September 14, 2012. A rapid melt begins in July, whereby the 2012 ice extents fall far below the historical average. Credit: NOAA Visualizatons
Arctic Summer Sea Ice Gone By 2015?
Kieran Mulvaney Analysis by Kieran Mulvaney Thu Sep 20, 2012 06:09 AM ET
Arctic Ocean sea ice coverage has shrunk to the lowest level since modern records began, smashing the previous record by 760,000 square kilometers (293,000 square miles).
On September 16, the day on which, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), the region's sea ice appeared to end its summer retreat and begin its winter rebound, the total extent was 3.41 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles) - slightly more than half the average minimum extent between 1979 and 2000. climate
In 2007, when the previous record was set, a long-lasting high-pressure system that led to a combination of extensive summer sunlight and high winds conspired to create a 'perfect storm', resulting in a dramatic decrease on the previous year's extent.
This year, a powerful storm system that hit the Arctic Ocean in August likely accelerated the ice loss. But, "that exact same storm, had it occurred decades ago when the ice was thicker and more extensive, likely wouldn't have had as prominent an impact, because the ice wasn't as vulnerable then as it is now," said Claire Parkinson, a climate scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Whereas almost the entirety of Antarctic sea ice melts each summer, the Arctic ice cap has historically contained thick, multi-year ice that has survived the summer melt and thickened each winter. However, as temperatures have risen, that muti-year ice has thinned, and new ice has not had the opportunity to survive for a second year. With each year of melt, the ice cap overall is becoming more vulnerable to further melt.
“The strong late season decline is indicative of how thin the ice cover is,” said NSIDC scientist Walt Meier. “Ice has to be quite thin to continue melting away as the sun goes down and fall approaches.”
HSW: Why is Arctic ice melting 50 years too fast?
“We are now in uncharted territory,” added NSIDC Director Mark Serreze. “While we’ve long known that as the planet warms up, changes would be seen first and be most pronounced in the Arctic, few of us were prepared for how rapidly the changes would actually occur.”
At least one scientist feels the complete disappearance of summer sea ice in the Arctic is now imminent.
"The final collapse ... is now happening and will probably be complete by 2015/16," Prof Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University told The Guardian.
Most other experts are far more circumspect in their predictions; for example, Cecilia Bitz of the University of Washington recently commented to Andy Revkin of the New York Times that she thinks a "50/50 chance" that summer sea ice disappears entirely or almost entirely within a few decades "is about right."
(It should be pointed out that this does not mean that the Arctic Ocean will have no sea ice at all; under even the most pessimistic models, ice will grow during the winter months, but will be almost entirely seasonal rather than multi-year, and thus all the more likely to melt completely at some point each summer.)
However, the genuine concern of many researchers over the fact that their worst predictions are coming to pass with some rapidity, is palpable.
“It’s hard even for people like me to believe, to see that climate change is actually doing what our worst fears dictated,” Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University told the New York Times last month. “It’s starting to give me chills, to tell you the truth.”
Image: Satellite data reveal how the new record low Arctic sea ice extent, from Sept. 16, 2012, compares to the average minimum extent over the past 30 years (in yellow). Sea ice extent maps are derived from data captured by the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer aboard NASA's Nimbus-7 satellite and the Special Sensor Microwave Imager on multiple satellites from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. Credit: NASA/Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio
Logged
Rusty Shackleford
September 20, 2012, 5:38am
Guest User
Antarctic sea ice set another record this past week, with the most amount of ice ever recorded on day 256 of the calendar year (September 12 of this leap year). Please, nobody tell the mainstream media or they might have to retract some stories and admit they are misrepresenting scientific data.
National Public Radio (NPR) published an article on its website last month claiming, “Ten years ago, a piece of ice the size of Rhode Island disintegrated and melted in the waters off Antarctica. Two other massive ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula had suffered similar fates a few years before. The events became poster children for the effects of global warming. … There’s no question that unusually warm air triggered the final demise of these huge chunks of ice.”
NPR failed to mention anywhere in its article that Antarctic sea ice has been growing since satellites first began measuring the ice 33 years ago and the sea ice has been above the 33-year average throughout 2012.
Indeed, none of the mainstream media are covering this important story. A Google News search of the terms Antarctic, sea ice and record turns up not a single article on the Antarctic sea ice record. Amusingly, page after page of Google News results for Antarctic sea ice record show links to news articles breathlessly spreading fear and warning of calamity because Arctic sea ice recently set a 33-year low.
Sea ice around one pole is shrinking while sea ice around another pole is growing. This sure sounds like a global warming crisis to me.
Quite obviously the solution to the problem if indeed it has been caused by mankind, is to eliminate the cause. I propose the random extermination of half of the planet's population. Men, women, children, the productive, the unproductive, world leaders, society's bottom feeders, fully one half of the populace. Kill, kill, kill for the return of the ice caps.
Try to imagine a more active sun and therefore more heat being generated by the sun to melt the ice during the summer when the artic has summer.
What? The sun plays an active roll in ice meting? I guess we better sue the sun and it's creator for the harm it's doing to the Earth. It's not entitled to harm OUR environment
Libertarian4life, I felt I offered a rather elegant and simple solution to a problem for which I have no interest. You in turn make it a political issue. A typical reaction on this site. I was merely attempting to end yet another pointless discussion with logic and common sense.
Damn Libertarian4life....I guess there is only one solution left....
"Approval ratings go up and down for various reasons... An example is the high post 911 support for GWB even though he could be said to be responsible for the event." --- Box A Rox '9/11 Truther'
Melania is a bimbo... she is there to look at, not to listen to. --- Box A Rox and his 'War on Women'
Posting in another Global Warming "My God! My God! We're all going to die!" thread
"Approval ratings go up and down for various reasons... An example is the high post 911 support for GWB even though he could be said to be responsible for the event." --- Box A Rox '9/11 Truther'
Melania is a bimbo... she is there to look at, not to listen to. --- Box A Rox and his 'War on Women'
New technique suggests Medieval Warm Period made it to Antarctica May 1, 2012 Scientists have developed a new method of reconstructing past climates that uses the water locked inside crystals in seabed sediment to shed light on the history of the Antarctic. The technique's first results suggest that recent climate fluctuations for which there's never been much evidence outside the northern hemisphere may have affected more of the globe. Much more research is needed, but the implication is that the unusually warm and cold periods known as the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) were felt as far south as the Antarctic Peninsula. If this turns out to be true, scientists' understanding of how the global climate has changed over the last few hundred years may need to be revised. 'Our work suggests that there have been recent climate oscillations on the Antarctic peninsula that seem to coincide with these well-known climate events,' says Professor Rosalind Rickaby, a biogeochemist at the University of Oxford, who led the research. 'It's a further indication that these events had a footprint in the southern hemisphere - at the moment it's hard to say more than that.' An international team of scientists worked with cores of the mud from the sea floor, taken on a recent Antarctic research cruise. At intervals within each core they found crystals of ikaite - an unusual variant of calcium carbonate, more commonly found as limestone. Ikaite forms only in very cold conditions and fresh crystals have only recently become the object of scientific attention. As it forms, ikaite traps molecules of the surrounding water within its crystal structure. The researchers devised a way to recover this water, and then analysed its ratio of two different variants of oxygen, known as isotopes. This provides information about the balance of freshwater and saltwater flowing into the area the crystal formed in. This can in turn be used to work out how quickly the Antarctic ice far above was melting, and hence how warm the climate was at the time. By dating the mud the crystals are buried in, scientists can accurately match the climate signals they contain to records elsewhere. They estimate the technique's margin of error for dating in this area is about 60 years.
Libertarian4life, I felt I offered a rather elegant and simple solution to a problem for which I have no interest. You in turn make it a political issue. A typical reaction on this site. I was merely attempting to end yet another pointless discussion with logic and common sense.
You did not post anything resembling common sense.
I will agree that it was elegant and simple.
And yes, anyone saying kill half the population has some Romney DNA, regardless of what you say.
Logged
