I (and a few others, including front pager Mark Sumner) wrote the other day about the potential for depleted oxygen levels due to climate change to manifest much sooner than many people have thought. It could become a problem in 10 to 20 years. Today, Pakalolo writes about the state of the coral reefs that make up the Florida keys, and how the damage seen today appears to be perhaps a half century ahead of expectations.
Now for some more bad news. Yesterday I ran across a scary comment at Neven's Arctic Sea Ice blog (for those not familiar with this site, it's a very serious group that monitors the state of the Arctic ice cap. It's mainly amateurs, but they are serious about their task. And not prone to hyperbole. And not tolerant of trolls). I've lurked there for years, but have never felt that I could add to their discussions. (By the way, DKos member FishOutOfWater occasionally contributes there)
So when I see one of the more notable posters there write this (linking to another very good blog discussing the arctic), I took note:
Arctic Sea Ice is Falling off a Cliff and it May Not Survive The Summer
Arctic sea ice is today in the range predicted, in the early 21st century, for 2070/2080.
So, just like the dissolution of the corals Pakalolo mentioned, the collapse of the seas ice is apparently 50 years ahead of its expected pace. After the record low ice extent in 2012, I recall seeing someone predict an ice free day in Arctic ocean to happen before 2020. This prediction was ridiculed. There is not much laughter among the serious ice watchers right now. The Greenland melt season has started early. The rest of the Arctic is dropping ice extent fast, and it's not usually until June that the melting really gets going. Talk the last few years is how melt-ponding this time of year prepares the ice for melting in July and August. And how weather conditions play a big role in the melting season. A cool, cloudy July and August can undo all of the melt-pond preconditioning from May and June.
But the weather since last fall has been unhelpful. Through the winter the temperature anomalies in the Arctic have been record breaking, leaving the ice in a very precarious state. And so far in the spring the weather has not cooperated either - many areas are already above freezing, extreme high pressures have already opened up 75-150 miles of open water off the norther coast of Alaska. Those massive high pressure systems (one up to 1050 mb!) allow a lot of sunlight to hit the water and ice.
So instead of talking about pre-conditioning the melt right now, we are looking at an area of ice the size of New Mexico to melt in 4 days. And the weather forecast provides little hope for relief. Warm temperatures are forecast for the next week.
Current melt rates, if maintained throughout summer, would wipe out practically all the ice. And, worryingly, this is a distinct possibility given the severely weakened state of the ice, the large areas of dark, open water available to absorb the sun’s rays as Summer progresses, and given the fact that Arctic heat is continuing in extreme record warm ranges. Furthermore, melt rates tend to seasonally steepen starting by mid June. So rapidly ramping rates of loss seen now, at the end of April and through to the start of May, may see further acceleration as more and more direct sunlight keeps falling on already large exposed areas of dark, heat-absorbing water.
There is a lot of time left in the melt season. The weather can change. Maybe it gets cool and cloudy. 2012 did not look like a disaster at this point of the year, then crashed as July and August got very warm. So perhaps this is alarmist. But it’s not looking good, and a lot of people who spend a lot of time looking at this subject are expressing a lot of concern.
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Update - the scientist who made the prediction of an ice-free arctic in the very near future is Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School. Initially he made the prediction that 2013 could be that year in 2007, but seems to have revised it to 2016 ± 3 years in 2011.
New warning on Arctic sea ice melt (April 8, 2011)