I keep vigil.
The U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday (12/11/2018) announced the results of the 2018 Arctic Report Card (includes video). NOAA found that the Arctic experienced that over the past year, the 2nd warmest air temperatures ever were recorded, the 2nd lowest overall sea-ice coverage recorded, the lowest recorded winter ice coverage in the Bering Sea, and early plankton blooms caused by the rapid melt of Barents sea-ice.
Besides the above findings, NOAA’s report card is worth a look as it includes updates on rapid melting of Greenlands ice sheets as well as its tundra vegetation transitioning to arctic shrub, found a rapid decline in caribou ( because a warmer Arctic has less food and more insects), the arrival of toxic plankton blooms and micro-plastic pollution that has been transported from the worlds other oceans to the Arctic by ocean currents.
Man oh man are we ever fucking things up for ourselves, because unfortunately for us, what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic.
From the science journal Nature, Greenland is losing ice at fastest rate in 350 years.
Ice melt across Greenland is accelerating, and the volume of meltwater running into the ocean has reached levels that are probably unprecedented in seven or eight millennia. The findings, drawn from ice cores stretching back almost 350 years, show a sharp spike in melting over the past two decades.
Previous studies have shown record melting on parts of Greenland's ice, but the latest analysis includes the first estimate of historical runoff across the entire ice sheet. The results, published on 5 December in Nature1, show that the runoff rate over the past two decades was 33% higher than the twentieth-century average, and 50% higher than in the pre-industrial era.
“The melting is not just increasing — it’s accelerating,” says lead author Luke Trusel, a glaciologist at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. “And that’s a key concern for the future.”
From Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
Rapid deglaciation is occuring across the cryosphere (ice and snow), including high mountain glaciers. NASA shines a spotlight on the problem in Alaska, Patagonia, the Southern Alps, and Asia. Currently, melting water from high mountain glaciers contributes 30 percent to sea level rise, even though they comprise only 1 percent of the world's ice. Greenland will overtake that percentage as the mountain glaciers retreat to a trickle.
From the American Geophysical Union.
WASHINGTON D.C. -- Glaciers in Alaska's Denali National Park are melting faster than at any time in the past four centuries because of rising summer temperatures, a new study finds.
New ice cores taken from the summit of Mt. Hunter in Denali National Park show summers there are least 1.2-2 degrees Celsius (2.2-3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than summers were during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. The warming at Mt. Hunter is about double the amount of warming that has occurred during the summer at areas at sea level in Alaska over the same time period, according to the new research.
The warmer temperatures are melting 60 times more snow from Mt. Hunter today than the amount of snow that melted during the summer before the start of the industrial period 150 years ago, according to the study. More snow now melts on Mt. Hunter than at any time in the past 400 years, said Dominic Winski, a glaciologist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire and lead author of the new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
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The warming correlates with hotter temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean, according to the study's authors. Previous research has shown the tropical Pacific has warmed over the past century due to increased greenhouse gas emissions.
The below video from NASA has beautiful scenery and is informative on this particular topic.
Backcountry skiers caught a mountain glacier collapse in New Zealand on video. It’s quite remarkable as it shows the debris flow racing down a mountain valley.
A glacier collapse in Iceland.
Unfortunately, this grim news is becoming routine. Climate change appears to finally receive the media coverage that has been sorely lacking for the past few decades, and our newly elected congress has picked up the mantle as well. A small sliver of progress.
We need to keep the pressure on and continue the rising momentum because as Chris Mooney of the Washington Post writes, The next five years will be ‘anomalously warm,’ scientists predict. People will be sure to notice.
Thank you for reading and caring.