There’s a flurry of articles in the current news cycle about a massive study showing that Arctic ice loss is (everyone say it with me) “worse than we thought”.
One example is, CBC News: Arctic ice melting faster than feared: study:
The head of the largest climate change study ever undertaken in Canada says the Arctic sea ice is thinning faster than expected.
“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.
The study aboard the Canadian Coast Guard research ship Amundsen began in July 2007 and involved 370 scientists from around the world.
It was the first time a research vessel had ever remained mobile in open water in the Far North.
Barber called the expedition climate scientists’ “first opportunity to look at what the Arctic Ocean looks like in the middle of winter.”
…
“It’s an early indicator of what we can expect to happen further south,” Barber said at a news conference in Winnipeg. “We can expect things to happen faster here, too.”
Barber said the human impact on climate is being superimposed on the natural variation in climate and temperature.
The result is more variability in the climate: warm spells are getting warmer and the cold spells are getting colder.
The researchers also found that storms have become more frequent in the North as the sea ice thins.
“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 said much of the research undertaken on the Amundsen involved measuring the effects of changing climate on the Arctic.
“We know we’re losing sea ice. What you’re not aware of is … what the consequences of this change are,” said Barber.
Other articles on this report and situation:
- Arctic ice melt worst than ‘most pessimistic’ models: study
- Arctic ice melt alarms scientists
- Arctic sea ice vanishing faster than ‘our most pessimistic models’: researcher
- Arctic thaw has litany of hazards, study finds
- Int’l study finds Arctic sea ice melting; changing weather, threatening mammals
As for the findings–is any of this really a surprise? As I;ve said about Avogadro’s number of times on this site in the last year, the science is still behind reality in terms of understanding how various parts of the Earth system are interacting and accelerating climate change and its various impacts on human beings. And one of the areas we’re furthest behind the eight-ball is ice dynamics. So when a study of this size and scope is undertaken, the only real surprise would have been if the scientists said, “Gee, things up north weren’t as bad as we thought. Go figure.”
The big fear here, at least the one that literally keeps me up some nights, is feedbacks. We know that the planet is warming more in the Arctic than the global average, and we’re seeing that have the obvious effect in terms of ice loss. That ice loss triggers the first feedback we all learn about in becoming armchair climate experts–the albedo flip. (Bright snow and ice is replaced by much darker open ocean or land, which means more heat from the sun is absorbed over a longer summer. More heat = more melting = more albedo flip = more heating, etc.) Combine this warming of the northern hemisphere with its immense carbon deposits in methane hydrate deposits and permafrost-entombed plant matter (far more carbon than is currently in the air), and it’s obvious we’re sprinting toward a terrifying situation–a turbo-charged greenhouse effect complete with a massive increase in ocean acidification.
We can’t say yet exactly where that mother of all tipping points lies, which is precisely the problem. We’re continuing to pump about 30 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (not to mention other greenhouse gases plus emissions from things other than energy use), but we don’t know if our current business as usual path takes us over the tipping point in 20 years or 10 or tomorrow or if we passed it years ago and just haven’t seen the evidence yet. Our far from complete knowledge of how the planet works plus the huge latency of the Earth system make this a precarious situation, to put it mildly.
Honestly, this is so depressing I think I’ll go shopping for a shiny new SUV. Something manly, with a V8, a trailer hitch, and seating for at least eight adults.
And here’s more insanity (from http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre6145kp-us-climate-canada/):
“Both the Canadian government and the oil and gas industry are keenly interested in the possible environmental impact of development further north in the Arctic, said professor Louis Fortier of Laval University.
Currently, development is focused on mainland regions such as the massive gas fields in the Mackenzie River Delta on the Beaufort Sea. But receding ice levels may make the wider Arctic more accessible to ships and make drilling in more areas possible.”
Big oil thrilled at the possibility of more drilling real-estate as global warming destroys the ice cap. We’ve left irony behind and fallen down the rabbit hole.
Lou I know just how you feel. I some times think what the heck, lets all go on that long haul holiday to Australia now.
The tipping point maybe a bit like peak oil where we bump along the crest for a bit. There is probably a period just before the inflection where there is no return – the true/hidden summation tip point.
Personally, I think we are there (2007). The Arctic summer ice is gone and that is probably the visible indication of the hidden point of no return (especially with the inertia of our continued emissions).
Funny how this seems to closely correlate with peak oil which started around 2005. I wonder if there is a fixed relation.
Mark P: Funny you should use the rabbit hole line. Lately I’ve been talking about how we’ve stepped through the looking glass.
paulm: I honestly don’t know how to interpret the meaning of the 2007 plunge in ice extent. I could easily imagine scenarios in which the feedbacks and stores of carbon are such that it happens well before or after we’ve passed the tipping. There’s one part of my brain that’s saying, “Don’t get carried away–this might be a case of reading too much into data, like the people who use oil price as a proxy for having reached peak oil.” There’s also another part of my brain that keeps screaming about how much ice we lost in 2007 (not just extent, but volume) and how all indications are that it’s not coming back.