Arctic Losing Permafrost Coastline At Up To 3 Ft/Day, Up To 6X+ Historic Average Over Past 50 Years

[hatrack]

Drone surveys have revealed erosion of coastal permafrost in the Arctic — up to 3 feet a day. Researchers reported Friday that the recent rate of erosion is six times higher than the historical rate.

Meanwhile, the Arctic just saw the hottest May on record, with temperatures in northwest Russia hitting a remarkable 84 degrees Fahrenheit (29 degrees Celsius). Global warming is driving Arctic sea ice to near-record lows, which in turn is driving ever-worsening summer heat waves in the southern United States, according to another new study.

In the first study, a team led by University of Edinburgh scientists flew drone-mounted cameras over a section of permafrost coastline in the Canadian Arctic. They found that during a 40-day period in the summer of 2017, the coast had retreated a remarkable 47 feet — with daily rates of collapse sometimes exceeding 3 feet.

“Big chunks of soil and ground break off the coastline every day, then fall into the waves and get eaten away,” co-author Dr. Isla Myers-Smith, a University of Edinburgh geoscientist, explained. This rate of erosion was more than six times greater than the historical average experienced in the previous half century.

EDIT

https://thinkprogress.org/arctic-death-spiral-coastal-permafrost-collapse-23d650acea99/

[Boomer]

1. Undercutting the urgency (yet again)

This is so typical: "Unless we start cutting carbon pollution sharply and rapidly, we can expect Arctic temperatures to soar in the coming decades, bringing ever worsening extreme weather to this country."

These statements show up so often, and they always leave the impression that we can avert uncomfortable climate change if we just act now. The reality is that we're already committed to uncomfortable climate change, no matter what we do and when. The only thing we can avert now -- possibly -- is catastrophic climate change, and even this claim appears to be built more on hope rather than scientific evidence that we can stop or reverse the current feedback loops.

[Delphinus]

3. Yes - thank you.

I read Jared Diamond's Collapse years ago and he talked about the pollutants already in the air, even if we stopped today, staying around for 50-years. That has stayed with me and I always put into context the things I read with that piece of information from Diamond's book.

[Boomer]

4. That's such a good book

Collapse has stayed with me as well, in many ways, and it's helped me better understand why we -- as a species -- are so bad at dealing with emergencies on a global scale. He suggested that the cultures that survive best are those in which there is a central authority figure with the power to act, and who has a full understanding of the impact of human activity within their realm (either through thorough administrative reports or thru direct observation). And yes, there were other factors, but those key traits stood out to me.

Very few contemporary nations meet those criteria. So much of our economic activity relies on supplies from distant lands, where we're not aware of the impact of our consumption. Everyone has a tiny slice of the pie in front of them, but the whole picture is difficult to see. Our democratic leaders are too fixed on short-term goals that fall within their governing term, with no motivation or even logistical ability to focus on long-term planning. Even under the best of circumstances, their ability to legislate is limited and drastic changes would meet with strong pushback from constituents.

There are some very bad actors motivated by greed to ignore climate catastrophe, but the vast majority of people simply don't have the emotional and psychological scope to grapple with the level of change that we need. And even beyond that, so much of our infrastructure, population size, and governing institutions can't scale to meet a global issue. There are hundreds, thousands of individual initiatives, but they're just nibbling at the edges. CO2 levels continue to rise because we're locked into fatal patterns of over-population, over-consumption, long-distance transportation, massive building efforts, all the stuff of modern living that pumps yet more greenhouse gases into the air every year.

tl:dr - we're so fucked.

[NickB79]

2. That's going to liberate a lot of CO2 and methane