Arctic melt goes into overdrive

[Quixote1818]

Some of the graphics are missing. 2019 is in red. 2018 is orange. Black is the median since 1979.




Earlier this year, we saw the unprecedented disappearance of sea ice from the Bering Sea during a time of year when it should be gaining ice. This trend toward plummeting sea ice in the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic continues, this time centered in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

Why it matters: Sea ice loss is disrupting the balance of heat in the Northern Hemisphere, and it is reverberating throughout ecosystems, causing everything from plankton blooms near the Arctic Ocean surface to mass haul-outs of walruses in Russia and Alaska. It may also be disrupting weather patterns across the Northern Hemisphere.

The big picture: Across the entire Arctic, sea ice extent is at a record low for this point in the year, and depending on weather conditions during the summer, it's possible that 2019 could set a new record low ice extent.

The all-time record low sea ice extent was set in 2012, although subsequent years have nearly beaten that mark.
So far, weather conditions have favored an early start to the Greenland ice melt season, too, and ice melt there, unlike disappearing sea ice, contributes to global sea level rise.
The portion of Greenland experiencing melting ice hit a record high for the date on June 13, with temperatures rising to near freezing at Summit Station, in the center of the ice sheet.
The Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of the rest of the world.

More: https://www.axios.com/arctic-melt-climate-change-canada-e83ec6a3-6061-402f-92c5-4c887aa603fb.html

[peggysue2]

1. There's a once-in-a-generation expedition to the Arctic to study the on-going ice melt

Seventeen countries participating (over 300 scientists of various disciplines) in the study trying to get a handle on what this all means in terms of the dire prediction models. Unlike expeditions of the past, the crew will deliberately allow their icebreaker to be pinned into what hopefully will be stable 'old' ice and drift with the floe, reaching the waters around Greenland in the late Summer melt.

Fascinating article at WAPO several days ago (Adrift in the Arctic). The teams are now training in the northern most area of Alaska to prepare for a September launch.

[beachbum bob]

2. no surpise, we passed the point of no return several years back

[AllaN01Bear]

7. i feel that notar (no return) was in the 1970s

[Hortensis]

3. On the plus side, if Canada turns into Ohio, they'll want

immigrants. Lots of them.

I've imagining living in that band of population that mostly stretches coast-to-coast near the southern border knowing we had the enormous wilderness to our north -- instead of our reality of people, towns everywhere, and the same chain stores we have at home.

It'd be far stranger for them to instead have like us the equivalents of Cincinnati and Tulsa up there, a thousand miles of farmland dotted with towns, port cities like Erie and Cleveland up on the Arctic Ocean and Baffin Bay. Sounds yuck, all right, but they'd have their own names of course.

[paleotn]

9. Meme. It doesn't work that way

Northern Ontario isn’t turning into Ohio in anything resembling a human time scale.

[Hortensis]

10. That was just my facetious imagining. But if it happened at all

it'd be off in the future but then happen very fast. Don't fool yourself. It happens that way. Cities really do spring up. I'm just talking about a very large scale, similar as the one that transformed Northern America in the 19th century.

Do you realize that a devastated Germany rebuilt itself into a highly modern state in the 15 or so years between the world wars? Just look around at how your world, or maybe just how the areas around Toronto have changed in the past 20 years. (I haven't been there, I just assume many beautiful areas have dramatically changed character and decades. They certainly have here.)

Similarly, the people in the Great Lakes states down here shouldn't bother holding their breath that no one will come for one of the planet's greatest supplies of fresh water, another giant crisis related to the climate crises but also with huge man-made causes. It won't happen tomorrow, but if it happens they won't be able to stop it. And neither will Canada. They need to start voting for national politicians committed to conserving our fresh water, decades late.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Worth pointing out that graph is just for one region, not the whole Arctic

It's the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas - ie the region north of the Bering Strait. You can get the graph for the whole Arctic sea ice here:

https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/

This year was the lowest ever from March 31st to May 10th; and then again from June 9th (though it looks highly likely it's about to lose the "lowest ever for this date" title, to 2016 or 2012).

[Cetacea]

5. Greenland lost 2 billion tons of ice last week

"Albedo" should be a household word. We could have the first ice free arctic summer within a few years. I don't see humans surviving past 2030. As warming accelerates from multiple positive feedback loops there will be massive habitat loss.

[misanthrope]

12. "Humans?" Nah, humans will be around longer than that

What will happen is natural stresses will fracture modern civilization first throughout the next four decades or more. Humans will survive through (barring global thermonuclear war or a strike from a large-scale NEO) but in what state is the question.

[roamer65]

13. Humans may still be around, but at a GREATLY reduced population.

That would probably be a good thing for the planet itself.

[Uncle Joe]

6. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread Quixote.

[paleotn]

8. There's no "may"

It is causing weather disruptions in the northern hemisphere. We need to tell the denier jackasses to fuck off and tell it like it is. No more weasel words.

[misanthrope]

11. I think they call it "karma"

Humanity has had its opportunities to correct this path but has shown neither the will or capacity for it. ignorance hasn't been an argument for a long time, it's solely due to complacency, apathy and selfishness.

Payback's coming and it's gonna be hell!

[live love laugh]

14. I could've told you this based on first hand experience

Normally before the Summer equinox the weather is balmy and Summertime has arrived. It’s 59 degrees tonight in Chicago after rain almost five days a week for the last three months.

I actually try to appreciate this because I know that once the ice melts it’s literally going to be hell.