According to scuttlebutt on the climate arctic ice science blogs there is to be an emergency policy meeting with key administration personnel to discuss the potentially devastating rapid melt of the arctic.
A thorough search of the news outlets have shown absolutely no domestic U.S. media coverage.
The discussion of the current state of the arctic can be found here at the Arctic Sea Ice Blog. Link to current status update by crysophere climate scientists and their real-time analysis of the return to record low ice levels again this year.
http://neven1.typepad.com/...
Within the discussions, which are very well researched and indicate that we are again approaching another arctic sea ice minimum, the general understanding is that we are headed toward a summer ice-free arctic sometime around 2016. This is projected to lead to increased methane release and increased absorption of sunlight which will significantly raise surface temperatures.
It has already been shown that the warming of the arctic has led to the current weather extremes with the polar jet stream slackening with larger eddies and currents.
So far, the only media coverage of the event comes from Sydney AU.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/...
Amid fears the top of the planet could be free of summer ice within two years, the meeting has been organised by a US brains trust on the Arctic that includes NASA's chief scientist, the director of the US National Science Foundation, representatives from the US Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. Joining them in Washington will be Professor Carlos Duarte, a marine scientist from Perth, who is one of 10 researchers from around the world called on to help protect the Arctic.
Professor Duarte, who leads the University of WA's Oceans Institute, warned the Arctic was suffering and the "snowballing" situation would prove as hard to slow down as a runaway train.
How serious is it really???
At the White House meeting, he and other scientists have been asked to come up with scenarios that will inform research program on changes in the Arctic and the impacts on Arctic ecosystems.The Arctic is thought to be warming twice as fast as NASA's calculation of a 0.8C rise in temperatures globally since 1880.
9:29 PM PT: Wow! first post on the rec list! Here is an added bonus
See how the low pressure in the circle forms off of Greenland and begins to move down the east coast. This is a model projection made earlier this evening.
Evidence linking extreme weather to arctic ice melt
Can the persistent weather conditions associated with
recent severe events such as the snowy winters of 2009/2010
and 2010/2011 in the eastern U.S. and Europe, the historic drought and heat-wave in Texas during summer 2011, or
record-breaking rains in the northeast U.S. of summer 2011
be attributed to enhanced high-latitude warming? Particular
causes are difficult to implicate, but these sorts of occurrences
are consistent with the analysis and mechanism presented
in this study. As the Arctic sea-ice cover continues to
disappear and the snow cover melts ever earlier over vast
regions of Eurasia and North America [Brown et al., 2010],
it is expected that large-scale circulation patterns throughout
the northern hemisphere will become increasingly influenced
by Arctic Amplification. Gradual warming of the globe may
not be noticed by most, but everyone – either directly or
indirectly – will be affected to some degree by changes in the
frequency and intensity of extreme weather events as greenhouse
gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere.
