North Pole notes
I always find it interesting as to why some stories get traction in the mainstream media and why some don't. In online science discussions, the fate of this years summer sea ice has been the focus of a significant betting pool, a test of expert prediction skills, and a week-by-week (almost) running commentary. However, none of these efforts made it on to the Today program. Instead, a rather casual article in the Independent showed the latest thickness data and that quoted Mark Serreze as saying that the area around the North Pole had 50/50 odds of being completely ice free this summer, has taken off across the media.
The headline on the piece "Exclusive: no ice at the North Pole" got the implied tense wrong, and I'm not sure that you can talk about a forecast as evidence (second heading), but still, the basis of the story is sound (Update: the headline was subsequently changed to the more accurate "Scientists warn that there may be no ice at North Pole this summer"). The key issue is that since last year's dramatic summer ice anomaly, the winter ice that formed in that newly opened water is relatively thin (around 1 meter), compared to multi-year ice (3 meters or so). This new ice formed quite close to the Pole, and with the prevailing winds and currents (which push ice from Siberia towards Greenland) is now over the Pole itself. Given that only 30% of first year ice survives the summer, the chances that there will be significant open water at the pole itself is high.
The actuality will depend on the winds and the vagaries of Arctic weather - but it certainly bears watching. Ironically, you will be able to see what happens only if it doesn't happen (from these web cams near the North Pole station).
This is very different from the notoriously over-excited story in the New York Times back in August 2000. In that case, the report was of the presence of some open water at the pole - which as the correction stated, is not that uncommon as ice floes and leads interact. What is being discussed here is large expanses of almost completely ice-free water. That would indeed be unprecedented since we've been tracking it.
So why do stories about an geographically special, but climatically unimportant, single point traditionally associated with a christianized pagan gift-giving festival garner more attention than long term statistics concerning ill-defined regions of the planet where very few people live?
I don't really need to answer that, do I?
27 June 2008 at 3:11 PM
Already the denial community is giving credit for Arctic melting to the sea-bed volcanic activity (eg: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/haog-fut062508.php). It would be great to have an analysis of that idea with actual numbers and science.
[Response: That’s hilarious (if unsurprising). I’ll see what I can do… - gavin]
27 June 2008 at 3:17 PM
Ah ! Finally RC moves from atmospheric sciences to human psychology. Much deeper, impossible to know, and still interesting.
27 June 2008 at 3:19 PM
Gavin, I’ve been hoping you would do a post on Jim Hansens’ testimony before the Congressional Committee on the 20th anniversary of his appearance in 1988. Would you consider doing so? I have found it to be somewhat bizarre that there has been so little follow up in the press.
27 June 2008 at 3:19 PM
There’s a very simple answer to why this got traction: Drudgereport.com. TV producers sift it continuously, then rush coverage.
You can find out more (and see links to my earlier coverage of Arctic sea-ice trends, and what’s going on with sea ice at the other end of the planet) in my latest post on Dot Earth.
More on how the media could do much better covering climate can be found in one of my two book chapters on the media and climate, which the radio show On the Media posted online.
27 June 2008 at 3:21 PM
My bet is that this year’s Arctic Sea ice extent ice will not fall below
last year’s minimum (4.28 or 2.77), because last year’s minimum was very
low in comparison to all other years of record (1979-current).
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Sep/N_200709_area.txt
Arctic sea ice monitoring at NSIDC
http://npat.newsvine.com/_news/2008/05/27/1514154-arctic-sea-ice-monitoring-at-nsidc
27 June 2008 at 3:31 PM
Gavin:
I hope that I will not be pilloried by the community for being a part of this story. From what I can gather, it started with a piece in “National Geographic Online”, moved to a piece in “The Independent”, another piece on CNN, and then quickly grew out of all reasonable proportion. A positive feedback process. I’ll be the first to agree that losing the ice at the north pole this summer would be purely symbolic, but symbolism can be pretty darned powerful.
[Response: As we are seeing! We should perhaps tap into it more often.
- gavin]
27 June 2008 at 3:47 PM
I have a naive question: does the AGW theory predicts that the Artic sea ice should disappear first?
Another puzzling observation, If we look at the global sea ice extent, there is no long term trend:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
thanks
[Response: Yes. Arctic regions are expected to warm faster than the global mean. Global values are not particularly useful since they conflate the two disparate and out of phase seasonal cycles. Antarctic sea ice has both a larger seasonality and bigger year to year variability and so dominates the much more significant Arctic changes. - gavin]
27 June 2008 at 3:53 PM
Partly, all the attention is the result of some conflation. People have been hearing recently about the disappearance of summer sea ice at some point between 2010 and the end of the century. When they hear ‘North Pole might melt this year’ they might think the former predictions are being dramatically revised.
The symbolism is also important. Hopefully, this will help to discredit some of those who argue that anthropogenic climate change doesn’t exist, or that its impacts will be minimal.
27 June 2008 at 3:56 PM
Pat:
Many people betting on the arctic sea ice are using statistical analysis of the recent history. If, and this is THE big IF, we have finally passed one of the climate tipping points, then all past statistics are of no value in predicting the new dynamics of ice extent in the arctic.
27 June 2008 at 4:08 PM
The headline on the piece is probably why it gained so much traction. The very thought of Santa, his elves, Mrs. Claus, and rudolph’s home being submerged must be too much for Matt Drudge to take.
27 June 2008 at 4:09 PM
Andy Gates writes:
The mean global sunlight absorbed by the climate system is about 237 watts per square meter.
The mean global geothermal flux is about 0.087 watts per square meter.
Divide A by B. Discuss.
27 June 2008 at 4:15 PM
Khebab wrote 27 June 2008, 1547:
re sea ice: Mr. Revkin posted a link
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050630064726.htm
to a study on antarctic sea ice on the dotearth blog.
sidd
27 June 2008 at 4:21 PM
Hi Gavin,
I’m just trying to figure out how to spin the jolly bearded fellow if my children hear there is no ice at the North Pole this summer. Maybe he summer vacations in Antarctica?
By the way, with so much open water attracting heat in the summer, won’t this have a detrimental affect on Greenland and the northern permafrost?
27 June 2008 at 4:25 PM
RE: #1 Undersea Arctic Volcanism
Yep, I heard it today on Rush Limbaugh’s show (I don’t know where Rush got his degree in Climatology, but he must have one since when he talks about it he holds himself up as an expert). Something about a volcano as big as Vesuvius - and if it could bury Pompei it certainly could melt all that ice. He went on to imply that scientists were ignoring this because of their hidden agenda. Who needs numbers when you have detailed analysis like this?
Seriously, you have a great site and I would like to also encourage a “Real Climate” analysis of this red herring. If only the “denial community” would study it instead of looking for slick sound-bite retorts.
27 June 2008 at 4:31 PM
Has anyone considered, or studied the possible outcome of moving all of that mass (ice) and distributing it around the world? I know that there are predictions of sea levels increasing, but how will it affect the tilt and rotation of earth?
27 June 2008 at 4:52 PM
[Response: As we are seeing! We should perhaps tap into it more often.
- gavin]
I dunno. I’d feel, if this were tapped into, to be “not doing it right”. Using the same tricks as the denialists feels rather like a descent into their madness.
Then again, I’m weird.
[Response: The point I was making is that using themes and ideas that resonate might get us further than not. - gavin]
27 June 2008 at 4:55 PM
“Something about a volcano as big as Vesuvius - and if it could bury Pompei it certainly could melt all that ice. He went on to imply that scientists were ignoring this because of their hidden agenda. Who needs numbers when you have detailed analysis like this?”
Well, why is this volcano only having an effect now? Why is it erupting. And, to hoist them with their own claptrap, if this huge new volcano erupts, what chance for us, what with a volcano producing more pollution than humans have ever done over their history (which is wrong because that’s conflating ancient [100million year] volcano eruptions with eruptions today, just for those new here).
27 June 2008 at 5:04 PM
The story is featured in the Daily Telegraph, too:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5jz9fq
And brings out a few denialists in comments.
27 June 2008 at 5:13 PM
Regarding global trends in sea ice, I wrote this for “another site,” but no one found it interesting.
****
The longest analysis of satellite sea ice data is the Goddard Space Flight Center sea ice extent series, starting in 1972 for the Arctic and 1973 for the Antarctic. For a period in 1977 and 1978, there is a gap in the satellite data, and the National Ice Center (NIC) data fills in, which is also used to match up the different satellite sensors.
This is documented here:
http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~kostya/Pdf/Seaice.30yrs.GRL.pdf
The data is here:
http://polynya.gsfc.nasa.gov/seaice_datasets.html
Their most recent analysis ends in 2006, and must be combined with their previous analysis which includes the pre-1978 data (the differences between the two series during the period of overlap are miniscule). To extend it to the present, I used the NSIDC sea ice extent. I matched it to the GSFC data by comparing the period of overlap between 1988 and 2006 (which is the most recent/best “SSMI” data). To adjust the NSIDC data to match GSFC, multiply by these values for each month:
Month NH SH
Jan 97% 96%
Feb 98% 100%
Mar 98% 90%
April 98% 92%
May 99% 93%
June 98% 95%
July 97% 96%
Aug 99% 97%
Sept 99% 98%
Oct 93% 98%
Nov 97% 96%
Dec 97% 91%
If you calculate the anomaly based on the 1979-2000 averages, you get this (with moving 12 month average).
http://cce.890m.com/nh-sh-extent-1972-2008.jpg
There is a trend in global sea ice and it is down.
27 June 2008 at 5:44 PM
“Where does father Christmas live?”
“At the North Pole with his Elves”
Child of 1950: satisfied
Child of 2050: “Where do they live in Summer?”
Child of 2150: “He lives on a boat?”
27 June 2008 at 7:02 PM
Idea: volcano heated ocean to increase melt of artic ice:
Volume of water in artic (about 1% of world’s ocean vol.): that is, 0.0013 billion km3. If molten stone is at about 2000 C, and the heat capacity is about 0.2, than you would need 32,500 km3 to provide the required heating. However, to melt ice, you need far more heat so this number is very low.
In any case, just using this very low value, a cube of molten stone that is about 32 km x 32 km x 32 km would need to be released.
So, if each underwater artic volcano emitted 1 km3 a week (a rather large average flow) and did it for a year (about 52 weeks) you would need about 620 very active and extremely powerful volcanoes in order to warm the artic ocean by just 1 C (and that ignores surface cooling, in/out water flows and time rates that would require even more volcanoes.)
(Did math fast, so check)
27 June 2008 at 7:43 PM
Somewhere I saw a picture of three submarines parked at the north pole amongst loose pack ice. I assume this was at mid-summer.
27 June 2008 at 8:04 PM
That is a very interesting graphic on Dot Earth. It looks like almost all the old ice escapes through a narrow (about 200km) passage between Greenland and Svalbard.
I wonder if a surface barrier would be effective in keeping ice in the artic? That might be some low cost geo-engineering.
27 June 2008 at 8:14 PM
When I first started talking about polar cities as an adaptaion strategy for future global warming problems in the far distant future, say 2500, nobody would listen to me here or anywhere else. Now a few people are listening. But most people are still not listening. Can you hear the Arctic sea ice melting yet? Listen…
27 June 2008 at 8:43 PM
The basic reason I bet with stoat is that sea ice levels have a large amount of hysteresis, and 2007 guaranteed that any ice which formed would be relatively thin. Note that this works both ways.
27 June 2008 at 8:48 PM
I’m more worried about native populations of the Arctic like the Inuit, and how they can continue their customary lifestyles, than about jolly Santa. After all if he knows when you’re sleeping and he knows when you’re awake, he ought to know whether or not the toy shop is gonna sink into Davy Jones locker. For all its glorification the pole itself is less important than the entire NH region, close to and above the arctic circle.
27 June 2008 at 9:55 PM
re: #1
Although it’s not exactly the same, the “undersea vents near greenland” thing cam up a while ago. This nice, short discussion talks about temperature measurement techniques, and how hard it is to actually measure temperature rises from vents anyway, i.e., the ocean is BIG.
“Boiling the ocean” is hard work, whether as aa marketing strategy or in real life.
27 June 2008 at 10:18 PM
Whether the area around the North Pole is free of sea-ice at the end of this year’s melt season is not the important problem. The trend over the past couple of decades points toward a continuing decline in extent in the near future. Some analysts have suggested that all the sea-ice will melt within a decade, perhaps by 2013. The larger issues are: how much longer will it be before the Arctic Ocean is essentially free of sea-ice, and, once the sea-ice is gone, what will be the climate impact?
To put those questions into perspective, the U.S. CCSP claims “According to paleoclimatic records, there is no evidence of an ice-free summer Arctic during the last 800 millennia…”
Once the sea-ice is gone, there will no longer be a “plug” of multi-year sea-ice, which now limits the exiting flow of both sea-ice and water from the Arctic. When the plug is gone, there is little prospect of it re-forming, due to the positive feedback due to the albedo difference between the ocean and sea-ice. The resulting increase in low salinity water moving into areas which now exhibit THC sinking may be expected to weaken or halt this major component of ocean circulation.
My question for the model builders is, do your models produce a rapid decline in sea-ice such as we are seeing and what happens to the climate as a result?
E. S.
27 June 2008 at 11:05 PM
The comments regarding volcanoes in the Arctic probably relate to the Gakkel Ridge, where volcanic activity was discovered in 2001. It is worth keeping in mind that this is a slow-moving mid-oceanic ridge, and that it is under 3-5 km of water. The following short articles should provide some background on this issue.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/01/03/gakkel.html
http://polardiscovery.whoi.edu/expedition2/index.html
From the second article:
“Much to their surprise, scientists aboard the 2001 cruise dredged up rocks from the Gakkel Ridge that appear to have been chemically transformed by hydrothermal venting. Sensors on their dredging lines also detected whispers of warmer water, chemicals, and particles that are present in plumes of vent fluids that billow out from small vents (the emphasis is mine).”
If the Arctic ice sheet is to feel the effects of effusive volcanism from a depth of 3-5 km, it is not just a fairy tale . . . it is straight out of The Princess and the Pea.
28 June 2008 at 12:08 AM
Pat, you may be off by 1 million square kilometers or 2.
There is no sign of a summer cooling switchover http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/rnl/sfctmpmer_07b.rnl.html, although there has been a Low pressure where there usually is a High pressure system, at the same area where the ice melted last year mainly North of the Yukon and Alaska. The Independent story headline is a small gamble, there can be massive cloud coverage (occurring as I write) continuing from the usual great snow and ice Arctic summer melt, but I am quite sure the ice extent may be equal or less than last year come September 20. The biggest non story of the melt of summer 2007, is that there was a wide new area of ocean, seen from space, but never reported by any film crew in person, it was the most disgraceful, or biggest environmental press blunder in my memory. However, the North Pole
has world wide magnetic attraction, is a much more powerful media savvy area, than that huge area
of forgotten Arctic Ocean open water, I don’t need to hope about someone out there who will explore what its like when nothing but water is seen at the Pole. Reality is often forgotten at the altar of fame, albeit geographical…….
28 June 2008 at 12:27 AM
You say that what would be different would be the presence of large expanses of ice-free water. What’s a large expanse? 100 square metres? 100 square km?
[Response: The latter and larger. Leads of 10’s of meters open up relatively frequently. - gavin]
28 June 2008 at 12:42 AM
#11 Barton Paul Levenson
I don’t think the mean global geothermal flux can be a relevant measure when discusssing a volcano can it?
28 June 2008 at 12:59 AM
Why not listen to the pundits? I mean after all, conservative authorities like Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, Beck, Malkin and others know far more about climate science than….say climate scientists.
28 June 2008 at 1:26 AM
While we are on the subject of the cryosphere (or at least the North Pole sea ice), I thought people might like to know that there is a new rag out:
The Cryosphere (TC)
An Interactive Open Access Journal of the European Geosciences Union
Co-Editors-in-Chief: Jonathan L. Bamber, Jon Ove Hagen, Peter Lemke, John Pomeroy & Michiel Van den Broeke
http://www.the-cryosphere.net/
First published in 2007. Currently two volumes.
28 June 2008 at 1:27 AM
PeterB (#10) wrote:
Be careful what you say about Drudge — this year at least.
28 June 2008 at 2:19 AM
“The mean global sunlight absorbed by the climate system is about 237 watts per square meter.
“The mean global geothermal flux is about 0.087 watts per square meter.
Divide A by B. Discuss.”
Well, thanks for the invitation.
Volcanoes are very localized. Sunlight is not. Average volcanic heat over the globe could be a very small number, much smaller than the average value for global sunlight, as it is, but this would not mean the inhabitants of Pompeii would be wise to conclude that a local volcano would be less dangerous than the sun.
Yes, volcanic activity will not by way of direct heat warm the planet much by comparison with the sun. However, as the Pompeians found out, large enough explosions can have huge local effects. Including, they could melt ice at the Pole, if they were big enough. I have no idea whether these particular explosions are big enough, and suspect BPL doesn’t either. But the comparison to sunlight across the planet is irrelevant.
There are other phenomena which are similar. Mortar fire, for instance, is on average, across a position, over an hour, fairly low in power. But within a couple of feet, it has rather unfortunate effects on bystanders.
28 June 2008 at 4:28 AM
The Telegraph also covered the issue under its earth section.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/06/27/eaice127.xml
They may have reported it first. Prof Peter Wadhams is even quoted, the bloke from Fred Pearces “with speed and violence” book fame.
28 June 2008 at 4:42 AM
The three regions with a most notorious sea ice area reduction in the summer last year were the East Siberian Sea Ice Area, the Chukchi Sea Ice Area and the Arctic Basin Sea Ice Area. It’s now June the 28th and the three above mentioned areas show the following INCREASES OF SEA ICE AREA compared to last year:
East Siberian: +0.18M km2 (+20% increase in its sea ice area)
Chukchi: +0.1M km2 (+30% increase in its sea ice area)
Arctic Basin: +0.2M km2 (+5% increase in its sea ice area).
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.9.html
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.10.html
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.1.html
The article in The Independent makes its predictions based on the increased speed of reduction of the Sea Ice Area compared to last year. But this increase is due to the fact that THERE IS MORE SEA ICE than last year. And all the extra ice has to be in lower latitudes, where it is hotter. Therefore, it has to melt faster. No surprise, really.
Regards.
28 June 2008 at 4:44 AM
#8 The symbolism is also important. Hopefully, this will help to discredit some of those who argue that anthropogenic climate change doesn’t exist, or that its impacts will be minimal.
I think the effect is the opposite. Media says that there is no «ice this summer» and after the summer come the debunkers saying that there is more ice than last year (something we can expect this year). So who wins with this type of news? Only deniers!
Apologize for my bad English.
28 June 2008 at 4:57 AM
#17 Mark
Keeping true to what the scientific evidence shows is essential, breaching that rule would mean descending into the denialist’s mire. However for anyone involved in persuading the public, using examples the public can connect to emotionally is a technique that is more likely to work than any number of pages of dry scientific text.
Those volcanoes are not going to matter much in terms of the Arctic ice melt.
In addition to what you say:
The area is well away from the seat of action in the Arctic (Chucki/Beaufort Sea) where the melting last year was due to ice-albedo feedback: Perovitch “Sunlight, water, and ice: Extreme Arctic sea ice melt during the summer of 2007″ abstract: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL034007.shtml
There’s an ocean net heat flux of 3.8T Watt through the Fram Strait (between Iceland and Greenland) with 2.3T Watt through the Bering Strait, both into the Arctic.
See slide 8 of this 3.91Mb pdf http://www.ametsoc.org/atmospolicy/documents/May032006_Dr.WieslawMaslowski.pdf 2006 presentation by Maslowki re Arctic Basin heat fluxes.
28 June 2008 at 5:42 AM
With regards denialist insinuation that an ice-free Arctic is not unusual, thereby implying that the current events are not unusual.
From my reading such claims are not supported by evidence.
Scientific Evidence.
From Overpeck 2005 “Arctic System on Trajectory to New, Seasonally Ice-Free State” http://paos.colorado.edu/~dcn/reprints/Overpeck_etal_EOS2005.pdf
also
It may in fact turn out to be much longer that 800,000 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_shrinkage#Dating_Arctic_ice
According to Clark:
Historical Evidence.
1) Chinese Navy and the ice free pole.
This claim was based upon the book “1421″ by Gavin Menzies:
http://www.1421exposed.com/html/won_t_sail.html
As Tim Lambert notes with regards this claim: “if you are going to ignore the consensus view of scientists, you might as well ignore the consensus view of historians.”
2) Amundsen’s 1903-1906 navigation of the Northwest Passage was not done in an ice free NW passage.
http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/northwest-passage/amundsen.htm
British Library feature on the Search for the NW Passage:
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/northwpass/intro.html
Princeton University feature on the Search for the NW passage.
http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/northwest-passage/titlepage.htm
28 June 2008 at 5:54 AM
Re #19
The longest analysis of satellite sea ice data is the Goddard Space Flight Center sea ice extent series, starting in 1972 for the Arctic and 1973 for the Antarctic
So the longest analysis of sea ice starts just at the end of a 30 year period during which Arctic temperarues fell by almost 1 deg C. I take it this doesn’t bother you at all?
Trying googling William Scoresby. WS noted ” … a remarkable dimunition of polar ice” in … wait for it …1817.
[Response: Scoresby was referring to the single anomalous years - mainly in the Archipelago, where interannual variability is (or at least used to be) very large. Read the history of the Franklin expeditions and subsequent explorers (The Arctic Grail by Pierre Breton is very good) to find dozens of stories of random straits opening or not in summer. Variability is not the issue. Trends are. - gavin]
28 June 2008 at 5:58 AM
Off-topic but currently topical: I’ve posted a new web page to my climatology site:
http://members.aol.com/bpl1960/Miskolczi.html
It takes apart Ferenc Miskolczi’s pseudoscientific paper which is getting so much play from the denialists lately. I think I nailed his major errors, but I’d be grateful for any input by folks who really know this stuff. Thanks.
28 June 2008 at 6:00 AM
Gavin,
It is headlines that sell papers, and papers (or the media) that convinces people. Without catchy headlines, the scientific facts will not be read, even if the editor agrees to publish them. Because scientists, unlike the sceptics, have required that the headlines are 100% scientifically provable their message has been lost.
For instance, take what you refer to as “the notoriously over-excited story in the New York Times back in August 2000.” In it Dr McCarthy reported that there was no ice at the North pole in 2000. That report was true. But Drs. Mark Serreze and Claire Parkinson lined up to debunk it in “the correction” implying that open water at the pole was not unusual. Perhaps someone should have told Robert Peary that!
In that “correction”, McCarthy explained that the ice was much thinner during the journey to the pole, with open ocean there, not a large lead. However, Dr Mark Serreze stated “But there’s nothing to be necessarily alarmed about.” He doesn’t seem to be saying that now
The point I am trying to make is that by trying to be scientifically accurate Mark and Claire were actually misleading, if not down right untruthful. There was something to be alarmed about!
Worse, there is something even more alarming happening now. Whether the North Pole itself is free of ice again this summer is not important. That may be bad for Santa Clause and for polar bears, but if there is a large increase in the loss of sea ice then the global albedo will be affected, and inevitably the global climate will be affected too. How will the 6.5 billion people on this planet cope with Peak Oil and a climate catastrophe at the same time?
Cheers, Alastair.
28 June 2008 at 6:07 AM
In a recent article in GRL it was noted. “Arctic sea ice in 2007 was preconditioned to radical changes after years of shrinking and thinning in a warm climate. ”
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL034005.shtml There is that refrain again preconditioned after years of warmth. We just read about this with respect to the loss of ice shelves in Antarctica. This same quote could be applied to the loss of some glaciers as well.
28 June 2008 at 6:11 AM
Isn’t one reason why the story has ‘legs’ simply that a lot of people are vaguely aware of the North West Passage? At least one news item has touted this as an economic benefit from global warming. Any volunteers for the first cruise liner?
28 June 2008 at 6:44 AM
Actually, if your story makes the top of The Drudge Report, than media pickup is assured. Frankly, you guys should be pitching your stuff to Drudge. He’s not bad on the issue, although he tends to balance off the real science with the BS in the name of balance.
28 June 2008 at 7:15 AM
Perhaps loss of the Artic Ice is AGWs “ozone hole”. The history of CFCs and the ozone hole may be instructive.
In the CFC story there was a significant time lag between scientists sounding the first warnings (Molina & Rowland 1974) about potential damage to the ozone layer from CFCs and the ultimately unstoppable political momentum to get rid of CFCs (Montreal 1987, London 1990, etc.).
There were early bans on CFC aerosol propellants and actions by environmentalists, together with the predictable opposition of vested interests; but the “tipping point” was the discovery by British Antarctic survey scientists of an “ozone hole” over Antartica in October 1984.
This dramaticic realisation of scientists’ warnings - in a way scientists had not predicted - made it absolutely clear to the vast majority of thinking people that CFCs were a problem.
From that time on, sceptics and vested interest were seen for what they were. For example in 1987, the Reagan administration Interior Secretary Donald Hodel suggested that that the US government should encourage encourage the use of sunglasses and sunscreen, rather than violating the administration’s philosophy of minimal government regulation. The simple point that “fish don’t wear sunglasses”, made it clear that the issue went well beyond skin cancer.
There are many parallels with AGW. Scientisfic warnings - in this case much older - taken up by environmentalists. Vested interests, procrastination by governments, counterclaims by skeptics.
But now something dramatic is happening at one of the poles, and much sooner than scientists had (until recently) predicted. Once the arctic ice is gone the skeptics (undersea volcanism!) will look like fools to almost everyone.
True the politics are much more fraught, our economies are much more carbon dependent than they were ever CFC dependent, and much more damage is in the pipeline, but the dangers of not tackling AGW head on will be self-evident.
28 June 2008 at 7:34 AM
Here is a comment that I just posted over at http://www.desmogblog.com
When the Arctic ice melts, the sunlight goes into the exposed ocean waters and can be used by alga. Since the water is still fairly cold, there is lots of CO2 available for them to use for photosynthesis. As the alga grow the CO2 concentration drops but it is replenished by CO2 from the air. More exposed cold ocean water, the more CO2 sucked out of the air.
The alga are the base of the food chain and are eaten by zooplankton and other small animals such as baby fish. Thus, if the ice melts away early, more food will eventually become available for the entire ecosystem.
The seals will be happy because there will be more fish to eat. The polar bears will be quite happy for there will be more seals to eat. The Inuit hunters will be happiest of all because there will be more seals and polar bears.
For sure the Arctic will freeze over when winter comes, and the heat of fusion will be eventually be lost to outer space. So why is everbody worrying about the ice melting? Melting ice helps in keeping the planet cool.
[Response: All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds… - gavin]
28 June 2008 at 8:04 AM
The North Pole is one of the fabled “Ends of the Earth”. It is a place ‘with-out man’, wild and in a natural state. If AGW is changed the North Pole, then it surely is affecting us.
These symbolic locales cut through the noise of the weather and provide the evidence of human effects. Sort of like a picture of empty beer cans on top on Mt Everest. (Not that I’ve seen such a picture; I’m just saying.)
28 June 2008 at 8:22 AM
Why do you keep on telling your kids funny stories about father Christmas living at North Pole? Everyone should know that he lives in Finnish Lapland. What on earth would his reindeer eat at North Pole. Ice?
28 June 2008 at 8:42 AM
Gavin,
While RC readers are of course aware of the reality, wouldn’t it make sense, in the interests of science education and integrity, to highlight a simple disclaimer in sea/polar ice postings that:
========================
* There are only ~100 years of anecdotal sea ice observations.
* There are only ~30 years of comprehensive sea ice observations.
* Therefore, readers should be cautious about making, or listening to, statements about “recorded history” with respect to polar ice.
========================
Even if the ice isn’t always solid, let’s stick to cold hard reality in our statements. No need to feed the tabloids.
[Response: “recorded history” is obviously only the history that has been recorded (as you say, that goes back about 100 years - but in some places much longer). If I meant to say “in all of history” or “thousands of years” I would have. - gavin]
28 June 2008 at 8:59 AM
I think it is pretty clear that most members of the public only know two things about the Arctic ocean, polar bears, and the north pole. They also think of the NP as the coldest point on earth. So if they hear NP is icefree, that will be conflated with “all the arctic ice has melted”, which I suspect is conflated with GIS has melted. And you can bet the main stream media, will all have a special, showing the open water. PR wise, if it happens it could be a psychological tipping point.
(7) Gavin neglected to also point out, that the arctic is more sensitive than the antarctic because the land based ice in the antarctic is very stable, so the land ice albedo positive feedback is not operating very strongly there. In the NH a lot of land surrounding the arctic ocean is subject to the combination of decrease in seasonal snow cover (with climate warming), and decreasing albedo due to vegetation feedbacks. Both these factors (as well as sea ice albedo feedbacks, give the arctic region very strong positive feedback which regionally amplify the GW signal.
28 June 2008 at 9:28 AM
…associated only in America. In Denmark, said child-loving gentleman is a native to Greenland; in Finland, his domicile is an Eastern-border hilltop called Korvatunturi; in the Netherlands, the Christian-pagan conflation did not take place and the gift-bringer, long-dead but historical bishop Nikolaus of Myra, Asia Minor, arrives from Spain on his gift-packed steam ship on December 5 — nothing to do with Christmas!
28 June 2008 at 9:34 AM
Regarding the undersea volcansim:
Has anyone calculated the heat that the undersea volcano would need to emit to melt all that ice? And whether that result is consistent with temperature changes in the Arctic Ocean?
Seems like a useful mathematical exercise for some geologist/oceanographer (not me).
Once could note that despite all the volcanoes, Iceland is still covered with ice.
This article has a few reference to under-ice volcanoes:
http://masonmade.com/natgeonews/subglacial_antarctic_volcano.html
28 June 2008 at 9:56 AM
#15 HarryA:
First off, the effect of melting sea ice would be close to nil, as it floats and displaces an equal amount (mass) of sea water. If it melts, also the displacement effect goes away.
As for melting continental ice sheets, yes, that would increase the Earth’s moment of inertia about its axis of rotation, leading to a slight increase in length of day. Also the position of the pole (relative to the Earth’s solid body or crust) would change (but not by much). The position of the Earth axis relative to the ecliptic (the well known 23 degs responsible for the seasons) would not change due to this. (But it does vary over time as modelled by celestial mechanics.)
The change in Earth’s moment of inertia, a quantity called J2-dot, due to the ongoing isostatic rebound in Canada after the last ice age, has been well observed by satellite orbit monitoring, e.g., of the Lageos laser reflecting satellites.
28 June 2008 at 10:20 AM
So. How do things look down in Antarctica?
28 June 2008 at 10:57 AM
Re: #4 Andy Revkin
Thanks for the note the other day. But that post never made it in to your blog with the ipcc links. I read your piece
http://www.onthemedia.org/episodes/2006/12/08/chapter.html
and enjoyed your perspectives.
FYI I’m developing a movie script dedicated to the science of understanding this global warming event.
Trailer http://youtube.com/uscentrist
The script is in development and some fine scientists are helping. Getting it right is one thing, getting it illustrated so non-scientists understand it is the hard part.
Re: #13 PeterW
I’m recommending the Bahamas at least for now.
Re: #16 Mark/Gavin
I agree with Gavin, “themes and ideas that resonate” reach people. In my own (previously denialist family) I told them a couple years ago, how are you going to explain to your kids where Santa lives when the arctic ice is gone? That made them pause.
Illustrative themes help, as long as they are not using the denialist tactics of fabrication out of context. I believe Gavin has this in the right context.
28 June 2008 at 10:59 AM
The media interest about an ice-free north pole prompted me to look at climate model output from CCSM3. CCSM3 is one of only two IPCC models that can keep up with the sea ice decline in the satellite record. It has excursions as big as September 2007 about 1% of the time in the early 21st century.
The model estimates odds of an ice-free north pole in September are about 1 in 70 for the decade starting in 2008. The north pole is ice-free more frequently in the upcoming decades and it is virtually always ice-free by 2040.
The model almost certainly does not have perfect natural variability or sensitivity to anthropogenic forcing. I think it is probably better than our guesses though!
28 June 2008 at 11:17 AM
re 33 (Sorry for the formatting - cutting & pasting from spreadsheet to text editor to RC)
Lister, C. R. B., Heat Flow and Hydrothermal Circulation, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Vol. 8, p.95
“lava heat content of 1350cal/cc”
“The worlds largest oceanic hotspot, the Hawaiian/Emperor seamount chain, may put out as much as 10e9 cal/s,…”
lava heat content 1350 cal/cc
ice melting 80 cal/g
Vesuvius
volume erupted 4 km3
= 4e+9 m3
= 4e+16 cm3
heat released = 5.4e+19 cal (about 17 years worth of Hawaii hotspot heat output, if my math is correct)
ice melt mass 6.75e+17 gram
arctic ice area ~14e+6 km2
= 1.4e+13 m2
= 1.4e+17 cm2
thickness melted 4.82 cm (if uniform over total arctic ice area)
OR
area melted 7.36e+11 m2
@ 1m thickness =7.36e+5 km2 (”first year ice… thickness from 0.3 to 2 meters” NSIDC glossary)
2007 melt area 7.72e+6 km2 (rough estimate from NSIDC charts)
% due to eruption 9.5 % (assuming the average thickness of melted ice was 1 meter, and not allowing for any of the heat being lost to warming the 4 km thick sea water column, or air, or evaporation)
28 June 2008 at 11:23 AM
It currently seems that the willingness of the media to cover global warming is directly proportional to the financial costs of the aspect of global warming that they are covering.
Thus, articles that link the loss of Arctic sea ice to global warming are acceptable, and any news article on Arctic sea ice will generally touch on the role of global warming - usually with a mention for polar bears, which are indeed cute (not too cuddly, tho).
What isn’t acceptable is to directly link extreme weather events to global warming, as that opens up some financial liability issues that end up on the doorstep of the fossil fuel industry. More flooding, droughts and heat waves are expected in a warming regime. The explanation is pretty clear: a warmer atmosphere means more evaporation over land and oceans, leading to a drier continental interior and a moister atmosphere. Large masses of warm moist air can produce more precipitation, leading to unprecedented flooding. In other regions, persistent high temperatures lead to more frequent droughts and heat waves.
Actually, a few news outlets are covering this: http://www.wtok.com/news/headlines/21817599.html - but most are not making the connection. Almost no U.S. news outlets have drawn the connection between flooding in the Midwest, drought in the Southwest, and global warming - but that’s not the case with the European media (and European governments), which regularly points out that everyone needs to start thinking of these “extreme conditions” as the new normals.
Where the U.S. media really fails entirely is on solutions to global warming - and U.S. academic and scientific institutions aren’t doing their jobs here either. For example, NASA - JPL has a good basic overview of global warming at http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm - until you read their “solutions” section, that is. There are in fact only two solutions, both of which need to be implemented: halt the use of fossil fuels, and halt deforestation.
That leads to the large and important question: without fossil fuels, what do we do for our energy supply? Sunlight and wind are the two basic energy resources that won’t run out. The technology is already well-developed and ready to be implemented - everything from solar themal to solar PV to giant wind turbines to micro wind turbines.
However, I’ve never seen a single media article in any U.S. press outlet that covered these issues - the large-scale evidence for global warming (melting glaciers, warming poles, shrinking sea ice, ocean temperatures) to the local scale (more intense hurricanes, more intense precipitation, more frequent droughts and heat waves) while also discussing the real causes (fossil fuels and deforestation) and the real solutions (replacement of fossil fuels with renewables, limiting deforestation, and halting the use of fossil fuels, especially coal and oil.)
The only real reason seems to be financial - fossil fuel interests and global fossil-fueled transportation & electricity interests don’t want to face lawsuits over the costs of these extreme weather events, and they also don’t want to see their markets for fossil fuels shrink. There is probably a decent legal argument that the fossil fuel industry could be held legally responsible for a certain fraction of recent crop losses due to Midwest flooding, for example - especially since they’ve waged a very well-documented multi-decade PR campaign that attempted to hide and distort the evidence for global warming.
The current U.S. media coverage on the fossil fuel industry and global warming can be seen in this article - a long interview with Chevron’s CEO that doesn’t even mention global warming - apparently, it’s not a question the reporter thinks is relevant:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/business/21interview.html?ref=business
However, the NYT, to their credit, did cover the current efforts by the BLM to sabotage the expansion of solar thermal electricity generation in the U.S.: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/us/27solar.html - that would be the same BLM that has been working overtime to transfer public lands to fossil fuel interests for the past 8 years or so.
28 June 2008 at 11:34 AM
Re #9, #30
Historical and recent climate data are valuable in assessment of climate trends and in prediction,
even IF, we have passed one or more of the climate tipping points.
28 June 2008 at 11:39 AM
Re #44
Alastair,
Again I agree with you and this goes to the discussion points raised in the Ics Shelf Instability thread. That scientists are reticent when speaking outside of the purview of their field.
I think that Dr. Hansen has been doing this very well combining his professional understanding and knowledge with his perspectives as an individual speaking as a citizen.
I hope that more scientists follow this example and offer their perspectives as individuals/citizens based on their knowledge and understanding.
John
28 June 2008 at 12:01 PM
I find the following web site a nice place to compare Artic Ice levels, to date I am more worried about June of 1979 and 1999 then current ice levels, but I plan to keep looking!
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=06&fd=27&fy=1979&sm=06&sd=27&sy=2008
28 June 2008 at 12:27 PM
In post #40, CobblyWorlds points to a recent analysis by Perovich et al. (2008), which uses calculations of solar energy input to the Arctic Ocean to assess the melting last summer. However, Perovich et al. make the usual error in assuming the values for albedo of the ocean and sea-ice.
They assert:
“Open water reflects only 7% of the incident solar radiation, compared to 85% for snow-covered sea ice and 65% for bare sea ice….”
Actually, the fact that the direct component of the incident sunlight arrives at a shallow angle to the surface and thus experiences a much larger albedo, as one would expect for any transparent material. This fact has been known since early tower experiments in the 1970’s, which indicated albedo values approaching 30% or more, depending on wind speed. On the other side of the equation, the albedo for sea-ice is likely to be too large, since the sea-ice begins to melt and form ponds, which have properties much closer to that of open water. Measured albedo during the peak of the melt season can be as low as 40%. Thus, there isn’t a great deal of difference between the albedo values during the seasonal peak in insolation during the melt season.
During the SHEBA experiment, measurements of incident and reflected energy were collected, but there was no coincident measurement of the direct beam. Also, the Eppley pyranometers used have a cosine angle roll off for energy with high incident angle. As a result, I don’t think their results to be of great value, even thought these data are often cited. See: Perovich, D. K., T. C. Grenfell, B. Light, and P. V. Hobbs (2002), Seasonal evolution of the albedo of multiyear Arctic sea ice, J. Geophys. Res., 107(C10), 8044, doi:10.1029/2000JC000438.
Part of this repeated confusion is due to the fact that we often see composite photographs derived from satellites. From this point of view, there is a stark contrast between the bright sea-ice and the dark ocean. These photographs usually view the scene below by looking straight down at nadir, or nearly so. The light which is captured by the camera is reflected from incident light which tends to arrive at the surface from nearly overhead and is likely to be diffuse in origin. It’s true that this portion of the incident light experiences the large albedo differences as noted in Perovich et al. (2008), but this light represents only a fraction of the total incident sunlight at the surface.
E. S.
28 June 2008 at 12:40 PM
Ok ok I hear you all but if the polar ice cap is melting where is the vast sea level rise every man and his dog is going on about?
I know this posting won’t be allowed to be posted up but you never know, Realclimate may actually answer some relevant questions sometime soon.
[Response: Ask some and see. (Note that the Arctic sea ice is floating and only has a very minor effect on sea levels - the worry is in relation to the land based ice-sheets (Greenland and West Antarctica)). - gavin]
28 June 2008 at 1:03 PM
A question:
What do we know about the age distribution of ice in the arctic? If some suitably huge area of the arctic is totally free of ice this summer, could it then be claimed with confidence that this was the first time such a large region was free of ice in “x” years, where x is some largeish number like 50,000 or 100,000 ? What would be the basis for such a claim? Ice cores? I know such statements are/ will be made but I don’t know their scientific basis. I don’t know what the long term average rate for replacement of sea ice in the arctic is. If it is 50,000 years or something, then I presume claims about how often the arctic has been totally free of ice could easily be based on ice cores. If it is 1,000 years, say, then probably all of the ice has been replaced within the last few thousand years it seems you couldn’t use ice cores to support statements about it being the first time in 50,000 years, say, that the north pole was this free of ice. ???
28 June 2008 at 1:03 PM
Martin Verneer notes that concerns related to the “christianized pagan gift-giving festival” are somewhat misplaced since Santa’a workshop isn’t generally thought to be at the North Pole specifically. That’s a comforting thought, but will we ever be able to adjust to the concept of the “Barge of Solitude”?
In a serious vein, the map plot from the Independent article is at least a few weeks old. In addition to an overall retreat, IIRC one change since then has been that the first-year ice has broken through the Fram Strait, which seems significant since that hasn’t been observed to happen before.
28 June 2008 at 1:13 PM
Re: #19
Dear cce,
I have just been to your site and began reading and could hardly “put it down”! Please publish this as a book! It is wonderful, and it takes a lot these days to keep my attention. (I am unfortunately getting to be pretty jaded.)
I loved it!
28 June 2008 at 2:12 PM
I enjoy reading your blog. Regarding the “volcano”, in 1999, a team from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, led by geophysicist Rob Reves-Sohn, funded by the NSF, discovered Arctic Ocean thermovents along the Gakkel Ridge. The 1800 km Gakkel Ridge runs across the arctic from Greenland to Siberia and is submerged up to 4 km deep. Geologists now know that the Gakkel Ridge is an active zone of slow spreading tectonic plates with massive amounts of activity including explosive emissions of super carbonated magma that have blown the tops off dozens of undersea mountains, produced mineral/metal riches from extensive hydrothermal vents throughout the range and holds sea life around smoker chimneys with abundant hydrogen-sulfide based ecosystems.
It is the focus of scientists from around the world because of:
Governments seeking to stake their sea bottom dominion claims, grant money, greed/wealth, reputations/degrees, adventure, and advancement of human knowledge . The arctic seems to be teeming with researchers (American, Russian, and Canadian), their ice breakers, ships, submarines, and tourist flotillas! See ScienceDaily for info.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080625140649.htm
28 June 2008 at 2:43 PM
Ike Solem wrote:
I urge everyone to read that article. It is appalling that while the federal government is pushing offshore oil drilling and mountaintop-removal coal mining, proposing to strip-mine shale oil and tar sands and to dramatically expand the production of high-level nuclear waste, they have declared a two-year moratorium on new solar electric power plants on public lands — which have some of the best solar energy resources in the world — for “environmental reasons”.
Meanwhile, the meager federal investment and production tax credits for solar and wind energy have not been renewed and are due to expire this year.
If the federal government were actively seeking to crush the solar and wind energy industries in order to protect fossil fuel and nuclear interests from the competition, they couldn’t find a more effective way to do it.
28 June 2008 at 3:34 PM
What are considered to be the dominant physical processes responsible for the recent (15 to 20 years) variability of the ice at the Arctic circle? Specifically, are the processes related to thermal matters such as increases in the air and water temperatures, increased radiative energy deposition onto the surfaces of the ice field, or others, or are they more related to structural issues?
Have any of the GCMs correctly estimated the observed trends?
Have any special-purpose models correctly estimated the observed trends?
Thank you for any assistance for finding information about these. Google Scholar gives so many hits that it’s difficult to know where to start.
28 June 2008 at 3:37 PM
@66, tony, floating ice doesn’t raise the level of the water in which it floats - the simplest example of this is to pour a full glass of water with ice, and let it melt. The glass doesn’t overflow as the ice turns liquid. This is where science meets single malt
(strictly, it does, but only a *very* small amount; for our purposes, the difference is negligible)
When ice is *added* to water, the level goes up, of course. Once the barrier of the sea-ice is gone, there is a concern that the land-ice in places like Greenland will melt into the sea. That *would* be disruptive, causing a sea-level rise and introducing a lot of dense fresh water into the circulation currents.
28 June 2008 at 3:41 PM
SecularAnimist (#71) wrote:
Synthetic oil made from coal may do quite well — from an economic perspective. Here is an article touting its feasibility back in 2006 when oil was $40 per barrel rather than $140 per barrel:
Thanks for the Cheap Gas, Mr. Hitler!
How Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa perfected one of the world’s most exciting new fuel sources.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Monday, Oct. 23, 2006, at 3:30 PM ET
http://www.slate.com/id/2152036/
The emissions per unit of energy is roughly twice that of conventional oil.
Please see:
Search for New Oil Sources Leads to Processed Coal
By MATTHEW L. WALD, July 5, 2006
http://zfacts.com/p/420.html
But tar sands beats this — with emissions roughly three times that of conventional oil. National governments might not give such matters much thought — though the last seems to have caught the attention of mayors.
Please see:
U.S. mayors pass resolution urging cities not use oilsands derived fuel (US-Mayors-Oilsands)
Jun 23, 2008 5:00:00 PM MST
The Canadian Press
http://www.oilsandsreview.com/news.asp?ID=16986
Not that the mayors have much of any real power in the matter, I’m afraid.
Non-traditional fossil fuel promises to be much dirtier than conventional oil. I wonder whether this been factored into business as usual scenarios?
Unfortunately, non-traditional fossil fuel has the advantage that we can leave a great deal of the infrastructure the same — such as the internal combustion engine. And unfortunately, whether the subject is water, gasoline, electricity or humans, one principle seems rather invariant: that things tend to follow the path of least resistance.
28 June 2008 at 3:50 PM
Gee, tony– there’s your post, up for all to see. Too bad it’s so silly. The arctic ice is already floating– melting it has no net effect on sea level, since it’s already displacing its mass in water. Archimedes could have told you that.
28 June 2008 at 4:17 PM
Here’s Dr. James E. Hansen on Youtube. I was hoping to find his senate testimony there, but no luck. This video is 4 days old.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVCMBozpoA0
28 June 2008 at 4:24 PM
RE: 30
Hey All,
I apologize for the digression to the earlier discussion; however, I seem to recall several several instances in which there has been ice free areas in the polar region over the last 50 years.
Two simple examples:
A textual recording regarding polar adventures: http://www.sid-hill.com/history/skate.htm
A pictorial recording regarding polar adventures: Though the truth is that images such as below, (Note the 5th photo down from the top: http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08578.htm ), are not naturally occurring openings. However, the depth of the ice even then was not significant, based on many journal notes I have read.
Point being, regardless of the temperature and winds even in the middle of NH winter, the polar ice dimensions, away from pressure ridges, are not very thick as a rule. This is quite different from the example of the ice that used to form in Lake Erie as the ice dragged the bottom and scarred the rock as recently as the 1970’s.
This does not mean that the current ice melt pattern is an example of anything less then excessive heat content in the region. In addition to warming, the observations regarding ice melt could also be related to increased ocean salinity. It is possible the Arctic ice melt could also be related to ocean currents carrying highly saline water caused by the recent increased SSTs in the temperate oceans between 1985 and 2005 to the region.
Meaning that the recent ice melt is likely due to global warming with an additional participant that has not been explored yet. Hence, this may offer the opportunity for additional research and model fodder to address how regional deviations can participate in global changes. It may be possible that this could be similar to the earlier thread regarding the West African Iodine and Bromine effects on methane or sulfides. If the research holds up it appears to not decrease the accuracy of the models, only to offer the opportunity to better model the physical processes.
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
28 June 2008 at 4:27 PM
#38 Nylo, The vagueries of Polar ice are well known, on one side of the Pole you may have more ice, on the other less. There was a long standing Anticyclone SW of North American side of pole exacerbating arctic ocean gyre movement, causing more open water there, as it is big open area right now. Polar ice does not behave in a continuous expected as usual way, Polar sea Ice changes with the wind and with so many other factors as well. This is why, stating no ice at the Pole may be wrong, or premature, winds and ice momentum may make it not so. A better number or graph to watch is
total ice extent, http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
2008 extent is a little behind 2007, it should be surprising to some as winter was cold in some qaudrants around the Pole. However there is more first year ice now, the melt may be greater this year for that reason.
#52 Historic evidence may be found in the DNA of Bowhead whales. the Atlantic and Pacific Bowheads are genetically different suggesting a long long time of ice barriers, in other words,
this seasonal melting of vast Arctic Ocean ice, never happenned, all the way back to when there was no Bowhead DNA distinction.
28 June 2008 at 4:47 PM
Wayne, the NOAA website says:
“September Arctic sea ice has decreased between 1973 and 2007 at a rate of about -10% +/- 0.3% per decade. Sea ice extent for September for 2007 was by far the lowest on record at 4.28 million square kilometers, eclipsing the previous record low sea ice extent by 23%.” […] “Snow extent and sea-ice are also projected to decrease further in the northern hemisphere, and glaciers and ice-caps are expected to continue to retreat.”
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html#q10
I’d like to see what the 5 year trend looks like.
28 June 2008 at 4:48 PM
John Pearson, do a little reading. You’re asking if we know anything from drilling “ice cores” in the Arctic sea ice, but I hope you realize that’s silly. It’s thin floating ice there — if you read just a bit (try some of these):
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?sourceid=Mozilla-search&q=age+arctic+sea+ice
you’ll find plenty of information on the age of that ice is documented. Not by drilling cores, but by how much accumulates and melts.
Yes, core drilling does reveal a lot about the age of ice — but it’s cores drilled in the sediment below the water. You can look that up too. It’s revealed a great deal about the age of the ice shelves in the Antarctic.
28 June 2008 at 5:17 PM
I have a Quibble:
“- the worry is in relation to the land based ice-sheets (Greenland and West Antarctica). - gavin”
WAIS is mostly not land based.
I would like to repeat my query from a previous thread:
Does anyone have a link to the presentation referred to in the article
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/06/25/2283071.htm?site=science&topic=latest
sidd
28 June 2008 at 5:25 PM
RE # 49 Harold Pierce Jr.
Why do you assume marine phytoplankton in the arctic are CO2-limited? Can you cite any published papers on this?
Regardless, even if they are, the zooplankton that eat the phytoplankton, and the fish that eat the zooplankton, will exhale CO2 into the water. And the seals and polar bears will exhale their CO2 directly into the atmosphere. So, unless you can come up with a mechanism by which the phytoplankton are sequestered in the deep sea and not undergo decomposition, it is difficult to see how there could be a net reduction in atmospheric or oceanic CO2 levels.
28 June 2008 at 5:40 PM
Re #76 catman306
Here is a collection of Hansens videos from the house hearing on political interference:
http://www.uscentrist.org/about/issues/environment/nasa-dr-james-hansen/house-hearing-interference
28 June 2008 at 5:47 PM
80: One of the purposes of this site is to educate the layman. I don’t always have time to wade through a bunch of journal articles in areas that have nothing to do with my field. Next time you want to answer someone’s question I suggest you either attempt to answer it without lecturing them about how silly it is or simply keep quiet. I have no idea how people figure out how ice free the poles have been over long periods of time. How is it done? Can it be done?
28 June 2008 at 5:47 PM
Here is the URL for the pictures of the three subs at the north pole
[edit]
[Response: No disinformation sites please - similar photos can be seen here or here instead. As I stressed above, the issue is not a few leads in the pack ice, but genuine large expanses of open water. - gavin
28 June 2008 at 6:53 PM
@81 Sidd:
“I have a Quibble:
…
WAIS is mostly not land based.”
A minor quibble indeed! (why even make it?)
Some (are you talking volume or surface are?) of the WAIS may be over terrain currently under the local “sea level” but it is indeed grounded and as such much (most?) of it is supported above the water and it’s melting will indeed contribute to sea level rise.
Arch
28 June 2008 at 7:09 PM
Re (61) : The BLM moratorium on new Environmental Impact Statements is indeed a nasty development that should be remedied. Especially in these times of economic decline, we ought to be able to hire enough staff to handle the demand. Unless or until there is evidence that it is deliberate sabotage ( this is certainly possible for Bush appointees ), I wouldn’t attribute it to deliberate sabotage. Bureaucracies do tend to operate in this this manner.
(82/49) Regardless of the potential effect on CO2 uptake by the seasonally icefree polar ocean, there are two major effects from the icefree ocean that should be of general concern. The first is that even if (and I think it is a big if) the polar biological productivity were to increase, it is still a major change to the ecology of the region. The second, is that the boundary conditions on both the atmosphere and oceans will be substantially different from what they used to be. This would have an effect on both atmospheric and ocean circulation and heat balance that would have to be modeled by detailed ocean/atmospheric climate modeling.
28 June 2008 at 7:30 PM
I should have said that the paleoclimatologists who study sea floor sediments are pretty confident that the high lattitude arctic ocean has not been ice free for many hundreds of thousands of years. An ice-free ocean, and the extra sunlight implied by that, would have a significant impact on the microfossils that are deposited on the seafloor. I don’t know any of the details, but I do know that the detailed study of these is a major source of information on paleo-climate.
28 June 2008 at 7:52 PM
John Pearson, you want information on
> how people figure out how ice free the poles have been over long periods of time. How is it done? Can it be done?
Yes. The North Pole is an ocean. The ice is only a few meters thick and much of it melts each summer. The South Pole is also an ocean, but it is underneath an ice cap several miles thick.
Antarctic ice cores do provide a lot of information about conditions over geologic time.
Around the edge of the Antarctic, broad beds of sediment are present, some of which have been under ice shelves that have lasted a very long time. Drilling into those sedimentary layers provides a history of the kind of organisms that lived there.
Arctic ice can’t tell much from ice core drilling because it is never very old. Instead cores are drilled from the sedimentary layers below the water. Each layer of sediment is a record of the kind of organisms that lived in the water.
Open water favors very different kinds of organisms than ice covered water, so the sediment record gives a picture of when and for how long there was ice on top of the water in a particular area.
Try try clicking this link, most of these after the first few science journal abstracts are brief popular science articles on topics that will help you find answers to some of your questions.
http://www.google.com/search?q=ice+shelf+sediment+core+drill
Other readers here will be able to point you to other sources. Most of us responding here are like you and like me, ordinary readers not experts in the field — most of us try to help point out answers to the basic questions that are often asked.
Putting “paleo” into the Search box at the top of the page and searching this site will find much more.
Hope this helps.
28 June 2008 at 8:00 PM
Re 82: Chuck: There is a mechanism by which ocean eco-systems sequester CO2 into the deep sea. It is called “the biological pump” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_pump) and basically involves inorganic carbon (calcium carbonate) sinking. My understanding of this process is that it mostly occurs near coastal upwellings which bring up nutrients from the deep and that it is responsible for a significant fraction of ocean carbon sequestration. That being said, I have no idea what role this might play in a world with an ice free arctic ocean. I believe that will require measurements that can’t be made until the arctic is ice free. (Just for the record: I certainly don’t agree with Pierce’s “why worry” sentiments. )
28 June 2008 at 8:06 PM
Specific pointer to article and illustration on sediment cores under ice and what’s learned:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/science_news/4204867.html
“The ANDRILL objective for this year is to look at the sediments trapped under the modern day ice shelf (see graphic …) in an effort to model how much—and how rapidly—the Ross Ice Shelf has changed. Layers of sediment that date to times when the site was covered by ice are coarse grained and include large pieces of gravel (the geological term is “diamict”). Sediment from the years when the drill site was covered by open ocean are made of diatoms, tiny marine plankton (”diatomite”). These very different rock types give geologists a clear picture of what conditions were like in the geological past. We are drilling back in time: The deeper we drill, the older the sediments get.”
http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/Core_example.jpg-.jpg
“The sediments tell the story. An example of rock types and interpretation from the ANDRILL core.”
28 June 2008 at 8:12 PM
RE: #82
As long as the aeals and polar polar bears are alive, they become CO2 sinks since they need lots of fat for insulation to keep warm. Fish are CO2 sinks also. If any these animlas die and sink to the ocean floor, they are consummed by scavengers such as crabs and lobsters. The shells of these animals are CO2 sinks because these are mostly chitin. As their bodies of the animals decay, nutrients are released and these can be used by filter feeder whose shells are usually calcium carbonate, which is a CO2 sinks.
Nothing goes to waste in the ocean, and most of the carbon ends up as limestone or in coral reefs.
28 June 2008 at 8:44 PM
I have been wondering a couple of things about the ice that is melting up there.
For example, 20 years ago (and I am just picking the year out of a hat), I assume that the ice was much thicker. I also assume that warm water both from the Pacific and the Atlantic has gone into the Arctic Sea and done some melting of that ice from below.
But, in my certainly imperfect understanding, doesn’t the ice first need to absorb lots of kcals before it will actually melt?
So, for example, has anyone calculated the kcals, over time, that were necessary to make the sea ice reach the melting point?
Has this value been added to the calculations when searching for the so-called “missing” heat content of the oceans?
[N.B. Obviously, I don’t know all that much about physics, ok?]
28 June 2008 at 8:50 PM
Hank: I appreciate the links but those are all for Antarctica. Why is there so little on the arctic?
92: “As long as the aeals and polar polar bears are alive, they become CO2 sinks since they need lots of fat for insulation to keep warm.” This is just nonsense. Most of the rest of your post is nonsensical in detail, but correct in it’s premise that biological processes send some CO2 (in the form of calcium carbonate) to the depths. But the claim that “nothing goes to waste in the ocean” is non sequitur . The ocean is fully capable of disgorging large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. It isn’t “waste”. It is just what physics/chemistry/geochemistry/ecology dictates. The efficiency of the biological pump depends on poorly characterized mechanisms. For example; heterotrophic bacteria can compete with carbon fixing autotrophic bacteria for nitrogen which can result in a substantial reduction of carbon export to the deep since the heterotrophic bacteria send CO2 back to the atmosphere via respiration. The nature of this competition is not well understood.
28 June 2008 at 8:59 PM
I have a question for Gavin or Mark Serreze, or rather a comment and a question because I was surprised that youz guys referred to the opening of the Arctic Sea in the summer as largely “symbolic.”
OK, it was bound to happen under the current conditions, so it was expected, but “symbolic”?
As PeterW in #13 noted, and as I am sure you are aware, the change in albedo is bound to have all sorts of detrimental effects.
Also, I think it is quite all right to use this tipping point to catch the attention of the public who are sleeping at the wheel.
If the denialists can use junk science to grip the public’s mind, what is wrong with using facts?
The change in albedo for such a long period of time each year is bound to cause all sorts of weird weather that we have never before experienced. Hot air is going to go up there, and what is going to come back down? Not the colder air we used to get.
And the remaining glaciers and ice caps of the Canadian Archipelago are gonna go. Today, Pituffik (Thule), Greenland, hit a record high of 62 F, breaking the old record of 57 F, set in 2002. OK, I know, we can call that part of the natural variability, but well…
[Response: The symbolic part is the focus on the North Pole. The substantive part is the Arctic wide decline in ice cover. - gavin]
28 June 2008 at 9:18 PM
Citing a speech by a retired TV weatherman who could no more construct a climate model than a television camera , and the philosophical authority of one “Thomas Eddington ” ( the inventor of the supernova light bulb, perhaps –surely not the Sir Arthur who confirmed the relativistic precession of the orbit of Mercury?) ,James Kerian, scion of the North Dakota potato, fruit and nut-sorting machine dynasty, and recent mechanical engineering graduate of Gonzaga University, has authored a Wall Street Journal online oped entitled “Yellow Science”, equating global warming warnings with the “Yellow Journalism ” William Randolph Hearst devised to spawn the Spanish American War .It baldly ,and bizarrely, asserts that no hard scientific evidence links human activity and climate change. None. Nada. Zip.
http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/2008/06/yellow-journalisms-moral-compass.html
28 June 2008 at 9:43 PM
Re: 69
Thanks Tenney. At this stage, I’d love any input (contact info on site). I’m especially interested in any scientific blunders/misrepresentation or false logic that anyone can spot. This thread has more on what I’m trying to accomplish. http://www.manpollo.org/forums/showthread.php?t=192
Thanks again!
28 June 2008 at 9:59 PM
RE: 87/88
Hey Thomas,
My apologies as I do not have confirming evidence; however, I suspect that ice cover is not going to cause a major reduction in phytoplankton activity. Based on the recent work done in Antarctica it would seem that ice covered areas are also biologically rich. Then again it is possible that the evidence only occurs at the edge of large regions of ice cover, (it was not clearly described in the article I had read).
The only question I have would be, is there a possibility that the ice cover may actually be protecting phytoplankton from UVA/B energy? Most images of ice floes taken from beneath the ice suggests there may be rich algae and bacteria colonies growing in the translucent ice.
I am curious about the source for what you are sharing, in regards to the biologic levels changing as the sea ice cover changes. About the only change in activity, I would expect, would involve a change in air breathing water borne sea life, that may be limited by the ice cover.
I had not considered CO2 to be much of an issue as I would expect it to be well dissolved in the sea water. There have been a number of recent articles in regards to whether sea life flourishes being related to the nutrient and iron content. I would appear these would seem to be well dissolved in the sea water as well (without an overabundance contributing to a dead zone). It would appear that the remaining contributor would be light, an interesting aspect to research may be how much would the quantity of life change in the region, if the albedo changes?
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
28 June 2008 at 10:00 PM
Re # 92 Harold Pierce, Jr.
What you have written makes no sense whatsoever. I strongly suggest you learn some basic physiology before claiming that seals, polar bears, and fish are CO2 sinks (Hint: Start your readings with basic aerobic cellular respiration). And for the record,the shells of crabs and lobsters are indeed mostly chitin, but that is a polysaccharide (a polymer of N-acetyl glucoseamine). Their shells do contain some calcium carbonate, but that is added only after a molt - and some of it is recycled from the previous exoskeleton - there is no continuous deposition, so the shells are not a significan CO2 sink.
# 90 John E. Pierson ” I have no idea what role this might play in a world with an ice free arctic ocean.”
Then why mention it?
28 June 2008 at 10:18 PM
In comment # 86 Arch Stanton wrote at 28 June 2008 1853:
Re: Quibble, WAIS
“…it’s melting will indeed contribute to sea level rise.”
oh, i entirely agree. my point was that WAIS is substantially grounded below sea level
sidd
28 June 2008 at 10:42 PM
John E. Pearson (#84) wrote:
wayne davidson (#78) wrote earlier:
Same story gets told by the mitochondria of three species of right whale:
New DNA Studies Verify Existence Of Three Right Whale Species
ScienceDaily (Mar. 1, 2005)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050223130802.htm
… and their whale lice:
Secrets Of The Whale R.iders: Crablike ‘Whale L.ice’ Show How Endangered Cetaceans Evolved
ScienceDaily (Sep. 14, 2005)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050914104455.htm
… which aren’t insects but are actually crustaceans closely related to the “snapping shrimp.”
Please see the abstract:
… and:
Depending upon the whim of the author or the exact species, the “snapping shrimp” may be called a snapping shrimp, mantis shrimp, mantid shrimp, p.istol shrimp, etc. even though technically it isn’t even a shrimp.
It is a fascinating creature:
Mantis shrimp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stomatopoda
… noted for its hyperspectral color vision:
“Weird Beastie” Shrimp Have Super-Vision
Anne Minard
for National Geographic News
May 19, 2008
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/05/080519-shrimp-colors.html
… and ability to see circular polarization:
Mantis shrimp vision reveals new way that animals can see
Public release date: 20-Mar-2008
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/cp-msv031308.php
… among other things:
Pistol Shrimp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uNUDtLCxj0
YouTube - Mantis Shrimp Attack (emerald crab)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hkv_30niM_A
… and at least one species of mantid shrimp has had its entire mitochondrial genome sequenced:
A.D. Miller and C.M. Austin, The complete mitochondrial genome of the mantid shrimp Harpiosquilla harpax, and a phylogenetic investigation of the Decapoda using mitochondrial sequences
Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution
Volume 38, Issue 3, March 2006, Pages 565-574
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1055790306001400
Mitochondria are of course endosymbionts of the eukaryotic cell — and would appear to be most closely related to rickettsia, the bacteria responsible for typhoid:
Michael W. Gray, News and Views: Rickettsia, typhus and the mitochondrial connection
Nature 396, 109-110 (12 November 1998)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v396/n6707/full/396109a0.html
For more on rickettsia, please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickettsia
So to make a long story short, it appears that there has been sea ice in the Arctic Ocean pretty much constantly for the past six or so million years. But don’t you just love how its all related!?
28 June 2008 at 10:50 PM
Incidentally, there are a few extraneous “.”s in my post above. Turns out that the spam catcher doesn’t like Latin.
29 June 2008 at 3:09 AM
#59, Dr Bitz/anyone less busy who knows,
Do the CCSM3 models show the same trend in perennial ice area as shown in figure 3 of Nghiem 2007 “Rapid reduction of Arctic perennial sea ice”? GRL Vol 34, doi:10.1029/2007GL031138
I hope you’re right about the models, but I’m not convinced 2007 was just a blip from which the ice will rebound.
#65 Eric Swanson,
Thanks for pointing that out, indeed Meir/Serreze/Stroeve (ARCUS) noted angle of incidence as a reason why the overall first year ice melt may not be as much as expected for first year. However the predominance of the impact of sunlight is supported by the fact that during maximum insolation (May - Aug) the rate of loss is typically at its greatest. If modellers don’t take this factor into account, I agree they should.
I second your question in post 28, about climatic impacts outside the Arctic.
29 June 2008 at 4:21 AM
We keep seeing the same graph showing current ice cover is at least up to now, June 2008 no worse than this time last year. The winter levels were better than 12 months before. Then we get comments that there is a lot of new ice. Clearly if extent increases is increasing it has to start with more new ice. We know new thin ice is more vunerable to weather than older thicker ice. So reduced sea ice in the summer is not a good indicator of continued decline OR absence of decline. More interesting is winter levels and the volumes. Does anyone have an url showing volume and thickness showing 2007 compared to 2008? I can not remember seeing thickness after 2004 at which point it showed a rising thickness trend showing historic around 1998 - a half or third of 1950s levels.
If the ice loss trend halted in 2007, this is what it would look like. There are claimed 60 year cycles in ice cover which could mask global warming for a time.
Imagine that Sept 2008 had favourable winds and the new ice did not break up. It would still prove nothing.
29 June 2008 at 4:24 AM
#64 T Siefferman
What you see on Cryosphere Today is the percentage of ice cover on the ocean, and at this time of year you won’t see anything really notable. Try September:
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=09&fd=27&fy=1979&sm=09&sd=27&sy=2007
If you were buying a car would you just look at how shiny the paint is, or would you have a closer look?
Try ice thickness as measured by submarine, note the non linear time axis. http://psc.apl.washington.edu/IDAO/submarine.gif Zhang’s using that to show the long term accuracy of the PIOMAS model, you can use it to see the changes in typical thickness, the British Navy measurements (Wadhams) done on different tracks at different time convey the same general message, Wadhams states over 40% thinning. Or you could try the figure in the Nghiem paper to which I referred Dr Bitz.
Harold Pierce jr.
If you are correct, your suggested increased CO2 uptake will be countering what looks like a much more massive release of stored carbon.
I’ve recently been persuaded by Gareth Renowden and Steve Bloom over at “Hot Topic” that methane releases are potentially disastrous on policy/human timescales. (Er… thanks a lot guys)
In “Methane hydrate stability and anthropogenic climate change”, David Archer argues that methane release is likely to be “chronic rather than catastrophic”.
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2007.hydrate_rev.pdf
However Shakhova 2008 http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU2008/01526/EGU2008-A-01526.pdf
Seems to argue that there is nonetheless the potential for substantial short term release.
Then there’s the land permafrost; http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0807/full/climate.2008.63.html
So whilst talk of Methane release in terms of all of it going quickly is overstated. It seems there’s still the potential for a rapid enough release to cause serious impacts within decades (if we