"It's happening much faster than our most pessimistic projections," said University of Manitoba Prof. David Barber, the lead investigator of the Circumpolar Flaw Lead study. A flaw lead is the term for open water between pack ice and coastal ice.
"There are more storms now because there's more open oceans and those storms are having a dramatic impact on the sea ice," said Barber.
The storms drop precipitation, mostly snow, on the sea ice and the snow insulates the ice, keeping it from growing thicker.
Barber compared the impact of losing sea ice in the Arctic to the loss of trees in a tropical rain forest.
The Arctic sea ice isn't just a cap on top of the ocean, Barber said. "The sea ice breathes," he said. "It pumps carbon dioxide in and out."
There are also a number of unknowns including:
Just how ocean currents will shift as Earth warms.
How much additional warming of the air may result as giant but unseen natural stores of methane in the frigid seabed's begin to bubble out as warming currents thaw them.
How the complex yearly give-and-take cycles of carbon dioxide (CO2) by Arctic plants and animals -- as they breathe in and out -- will alter as average global temperature rises.
In addition, as we've been hearing for some years now, studies have shown the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, further complicating the calculating.
Melting of Arctic sea ice is already triggering a feedback of more warming as dark water revealed by the receding ice absorbs more of the sun's energy, he said. That could lead to more melting of glaciers on land and raise global sea levels.
Whilst I was reading Fish out of Water's diary the other day, he posted this heat content anomaly graph reminded me to look at the amount of energy it takes to melt ice to water.
Citation: Murphy, D. M., S. Solomon, R. W. Portmann, K. H. Rosenlof, P. M. Forster, and T. Wong (2009), An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950, J. Geophys. Res., 114, D17107, doi:10.1029/2009JD012105.
According to this physics site it takes 80 calories of energy (in the form of heat) per gram of ice to phase shift to water.
However it only takes 100 calories per gram for that now melted water to reach boiling temperature of 100 degrees celsius.
With the feedback loops of Methane being released by melting undersea ice, loss of the ability of the ice to reflect the sun, and the energy already absorbed and present in the water, once again, I would expect these figures above as was the estimates of speed of melt, to be grossly understated.
Which is why I cannot understand people like Australia's coalition party and America's GOP pretending that they are doing anything but ensuring our demise by playing obstructionist politics, particularly around this now observed impact of climate change.
Every young person, in fact any person who believes our youth deserve a chance at any sort of life, needs to get motivated and demand action on this, if it is not too late already.
Note : This is a repost on request as this is important news with the current push by anti-science antagonists trying to force yet another 'wait and see' approach to CO2 emissions.
Comments are closed on this story.