Climate change causing rapid reduction in sea ice: An ice free Arctic summer by 2016?

[JRLeft]

Source: Indy Bay

"The polar meltdown shows we're teetering on the brink of climate-change catastrophe," said Shaye Wolf, climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute. "Arctic sea ice plays a critical role in regulating the planet's climate. As man-made global warming shrinks the ice, our risk of droughts and other extreme weather goes up. We can't wait any longer to cut carbon pollution."

See also: Classic climate feedback: Arctic Sea Ice Extent lowest on record and still shrinking | Arctic warming at more than double the global warming average | Sea ice volume: Multi-year arctic sea ice reducing dramatically

With the arctic warming at a much greater pace than more temperate and tropical latitudes, the loss of arctic summer ice is a climate feedback mechanism that engenders further warming. This warming influences changes in the jet stream impacting the frequency of extreme weather events in mid latitutude regions of the northern hemisphere. Thus we are seeing an increase in the number and intensity of droughts, heat waves, cold spells and flood events.

"Polar bears, walruses and seals in the Arctic depend on sea ice for their survival and it's literally melting beneath their feet," Wolf said. "But now it isn't just Arctic wildlife feeling the pain, the loss of sea ice has profound implications for the rest of the planet, including here in the U.S." said Shaye Wolf in a media release.

While 2007 had some extraordinary weather causing the massive reduction in summer sea ice, there was no unusual weather to cause the increase in ice loss this year. The reducation in albedo, warming atmosphere and oceans are really kicking in. Here is a video of a skype session by Peter Sinclair of Climate Denial Crock of the week with senior scientist Julienne Stroeve of the National Snow and Ice Data center, from a research station above the arctic circle about the sea ice reduction.

Read more: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/09/20/18722116.php

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Arctic summer sea ice is at a new record low level since satellite measurements began recording data in 1979. The summer minimum is down to about 1.32 million square miles (3.41 million square kilometers), half the average summer ice between 1979 and 2000. The minimum record was last set in 2007 with this year's sea-ice extent being about 18% lower than 2007. Some scientists predict we may see summer sea ice vanish by 2015-16, well ahead of International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 Report predictions.

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, JRLeft.

[JRLeft]

2. No Problem. I am a huge Climate Change advocate. I want this problem to

mean something to the people of this nation.

[Uncle Joe]

3. It will and progressively so whether they wish it to or not.

Peace to you,

Uncle Joe

[tavalon]

4. I do everything I can do to recycle and decrease my carbon footprint

but I only do it because it's right action. The tipping points have come and passed. The mass extinction event that will occur because of what we have already done, even if we didn't use one more molecule of carbon, is coming. We could have stopped it 30 years ago and we could have delayed it greatly if we had acted even 12 years ago. There is no action now that will stop what is coming. Luckily, it will keep us from doing irreparable damage to Gaia - she will recover in a geologic time frame and perhaps even quicker without the carbon spewing bald apes around. I'm sad for all the other species we are and will be murdering during our suicide.

[Gabby Hayes]

5. The Millstone is turning

Guess we've all heard from scientists who still believe the damage can be stopped and even reversed to some degree, provided the world takes immediate action. I personally don't believe that's going to happen soon enough to dodge some big bullets. Fortunately there are also a lot of smart people trying to plan for whatever happens between now and the worst. However, some of the ideas like bioengineering seem as risky as they sound. Even worse, no one really knows what is going to happen next because this has never happened before. Judging from what I've seen firsthand, it's not going to be a sudden rebirth of Eden. Nobody is denying it either. Some people rationalize by blaming astrology or move underground because they say a calendar told them to, but they know better. It's just politically incorrect to admit the truth and turn away from the holy derrick. I've stopped trying to fetch these people back to reality, but I have not given up on Mankind. The rest of us are headed into uncharted territory and will go there together.

[GliderGuider]

7. At first I thought it was just a failure of political will

Then I thought it was a failure of human nature related to our hard-wired risk perception and tendency toward social herding.
Then I thought maybe we didn't have the technical means to overcome it any more.
Now I realize it's all three.

How many people understand the significance of hysteresis in global warming? I wrote this on DU2 six years ago:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=74960&mesg_id=74960

One of the big concerns about global warming is (or should be) the notion of hysteresis. The definition of hysteresis is the lag in system behaviour from the time of any change in system inputs. This means either the application or the removal of an input. In the case of global warming, the current temperature rise is the result of CO2 that was put into the atmosphere up 50 years ago.

What concerns me most is that even if we stopped all global GHG production dead in its tracks this weekend, the natural hysteresis of the system ensures that it would be a further 30 to 50 years before the system responds to that change and stops heating up.

If GW is being helped along by excess CO2 (as is now pretty universally accepted), in order to stop the temperature from rising we would need to remove that excess. As the current atmospheric CO2 level is 380 ppm, we should aim to remove 100 ppm to get us back down to the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm. Given the mass of the atmosphere, this requires removing 530 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide, or about 140 gigatonnes of carbon. We currently generate 7 GT per year. In order to reverse the process we would need to immediately stop generating that amount, start removing the same amount every year, and keep that up for twenty years. And that 7 GT/yr has to be net removal. We'd also need to remove the CO2 we generated in whatever process we used to sequester the target amount, in addition to not doing anything else that generates CO2, like driving or flying or making plastics or concrete or heating our homes with natural gas.

The bottom line is that if anthropogenic CO2 is the culprit, we don't have a prayer of stopping the effect. And if the warming is entirely natural, we likewise don't have a prayer of stopping it.

Adapt or die.

Since I wrote that post in 2006, our emission of carbon has risen from 7 to over 9 billion tonnes per year. And there is no longer any doubt whatsoever that this is what's doing in the planet.

[GliderGuider]

6. Do we have your attention now?

"Tap, tap ... Is this thing on?"

[Bandit]

8. I heard a climatologist on Viewpoint last night say, "The Earth's Attic is on Fire"

If the attic in your house was on fire I bet you would do something.....

[NickB79]

9. This is the most important line in the entire article

While 2007 had some extraordinary weather causing the massive reduction in summer sea ice, there was no unusual weather to cause the increase in ice loss this year.

We just lost a chunk of ice the size of Texas due to NORMAL weather conditions. There's no going back now.

[countryjake]

10. And what do they do? Scramble to extract more Fossil-Fuels up there!

Race Is On as Ice Melt Reveals Arctic Treasures
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/science/earth/arctic-resources-exposed-by-warming-set-off-competition.html

I'll not even quote from that piece...the entire prospect (pun intended) is absolutely disgusting to me!

The reports of this ice-melt have been coming in fast and furious all summer from respected scientist all over the world. With the date of expected maximum melt for the summer already reached earlier this week, now the main-stream media is finally picking up on the story, accompanied by the dire warnings that scientific journals have been publishing for years. Yet still, there is very little interest generated. The serious effects this has on our weather, the Jet Streams, alone, should be concerning, not to mention the domino-effect this warmer water will have on the glaciers of Greenland, thus coastlines vanishing beneath rising seas.



Ending Its Summer Melt, Arctic Sea Ice Sets a New Low That Leads to Warnings
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/science/earth/arctic-sea-ice-stops-melting-but-new-record-low-is-set.html?_r=0

“The Arctic is the earth’s air-conditioner,” said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the snow and ice center, an agency sponsored by the government. “We’re losing that. It’s not just that polar bears might go extinct, or that native communities might have to adapt, which we’re already seeing — there are larger climate effects.”

Press Release: Arctic sea ice reaches lowest extent for the year and the satellite record
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2012_seaiceminimum.html