The Arctic, the area north of the Arctic Circle (66° 33’N), never garnered much attention, except perhaps for a few periods in the past where the general public would admiringly follow the feats of heroic explorers such as Alfred Wegener, Roald Amundsen or Nils Ekholm. But there's a shift taking place in the way this huge and barren part of the planet is perceived. More and more scientists and members of the public are taking an interest in what is happening up north and the reason for this is Global Warming.
As early as 1938 people like Guy Callendar, one of the great figures in the history of climate science, suggested that an increase of CO2 might be acting "as a promoter to start a series of imminent changes in the northern ice conditions." Early Global Circulation Models, imperfect as they were and still are, also indicated that an increase in heat accumulated at the equator due to greenhouse gases would inevitably be transported to the Poles, leading to such things as Arctic amplification. Signs that this is happening are increasingly being witnessed in the Arctic.
One of the main indicators is the state of the sea ice in the Arctic regions that waxes and wanes along with the seasons. The sea ice melts during the summer months and in winter open ocean water quickly refreezes again. But not all of the sea ice disappears during the summer melt. An area of thick ice that has accumulated over several years (known as multi-year ice), comprising several millions of square kilometres, remains at the end of the melt season in September. However, as predicted, the total has been declining over the past few decades. In fact, the decline seems to be accelerating and it is no longer a question if, but when the Arctic will see its first ice-free summer.
So why is this important? First of all, an ice-free Arctic ocean has consequences for regional weather and the global climate as a whole. As NASA states: because of its light appearance, sea ice reflects much of the sun's radiation back into space whereas dark ocean water absorbs more of the sun's energy. As sea ice melts, more exposed ocean water changes the Earth's albedo, or fraction of energy reflected away from the planet. "Feedbacks in the system are starting to take hold," said NSIDC's lead scientist Ted Scambos back in 2005.
Furthermore, despite the ever-increasing evidence that the Earth's atmosphere is warming, that it is mainly caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases and that this potentially could have serious consequences for the world's ecosystems, economies and societies at large, there is still a large amount of controversy, mainly conjured up by contrarians, that undermines the public's perception of the problem of Global Warming and thus delays meaningful and positive action that is needed to mitigate and adapt to the consequences of an atmosphere and oceans being charged with a large amount of extra energy. The - up till now - spectacular story of the Arctic sea ice melt might change this and move the debate forward towards solutions. There's plenty to debate on that subject as it is.
I've been closely following the Arctic sea ice ever since the drastic drop of 2007 when the summer melt beat the 2005 record by 1.9 million square km, a staggering 22%. In 2008 and 2009 Arctic sea ice extent recovered 1 million square km. I have to admit that as an alarmist it's a bit opportunistic to be starting this blog at this period in time, with the 2010 Arctic melt season looking to go low if weather conditions resemble those of 2007, but for years I've been missing a central place where the situation in the Arctic can be discussed. I always had to glean information and explanation from little corners of the comment sections of blog articles, so let's see if the Arctic deserves its own blog.
My plan is to collect news stories and interesting data concerning the sea ice and the Arctic in general. I hope it will attract a sufficient amount of followers to correct my mistakes and fill the (considerable) gaps in my knowledge. So for now: Welcome to the Arctic sea ice blog!
Neven, thanks for the links to the Ekholm & Callendar pieces! What a delightful surprise over morning coffee!
I think your blog is off to a great start, and it is great to have so many links to data that I'd no idea even existed. I do have a suggestion/wish: it would be great to have an index or home page, so that you could easily navigate to the most recent post (or find specific previous posts.) Or maybe I missed something, in which case, could it please be more obvious for those like me who have been known to miss such things?
Again--great start, I'm liking this blog a lot!
Posted by: Kevin McKinney | June 12, 2010 at 14:47
Kevin, your pieces were very inspiring so naturally I took the first opportunity to link to them. In fact, one of the reasons I've started this blog is that there are a lot of interesting but very dispersed things out there on the internet concerning the Arctic.
If you click on the picture with the ice (Nares Strait) on the top left, you come to the homepage with all the posts ordered by date. Or you could go HERE.
Because I wasn't sure how much interest the blog would attract I've started out with TypePad's cheapest (ie free) blog version, so there's not a lot of functionality like side bars to fill with graphs and blog rolls, or widgets with polls and other stuff. Perhaps when the discussion in the comments (which are most of the time the most interesting places on a blog IMO, especially on this one as I'm not able to write up interesting scientific analyses) gets going I might consider investing some money and upgrade.
Posted by: Neven | June 12, 2010 at 15:14
Perfect! I seem to become less adept at finding such things all the time. Thanks once again.
Speaking of adept, you seem to have a good knack for finding the right graphic (I'm thinking, for example, of the old NSIDC graph in the latest (as of 6/12/2010) SIE update. Don't know if you found it, or had saved it, but it was just what was needed at that point in the post.
Posted by: Kevin McKinney | June 12, 2010 at 23:53
Neven,
Great stuff. I will be reading regularly. And thanks to you, I have found Kevin's site, a massive bonus.
Posted by: David Gould | June 13, 2010 at 07:54
I found the graph at one of those WUWT posts celebrating the Arctic return to normal. :-)
Posted by: Neven | June 13, 2010 at 08:55
Neven,
I don't know if/how you can install a list of all posts (or the 20 most recent) somewhere in the left column, but it might prove useful soon.
And: being an alarmed guy myself, the terrible thing with the Arctic melt in 2007 is that it violently showed that things supposed to happen in 2100 might well happen much, much sooner... So beyond the Polar Bears fate, my real question is: can we trust other predictions about Antarctic, deserts, currents, methane, temperatures ? Or will reality go faster? The only thing I'm sure about, is that I don't want to experience the IPCC 2100-world now - and I'd prefer my kids not to experience it in 2020 or 2030 either.
Posted by: fredt34 | June 16, 2010 at 09:23
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Posted by: Peter Ellis | June 07, 2011 at 10:53
Second that! (Peter, you are so 'heads up!')
Posted by: Kevin McKinney | June 07, 2011 at 14:21
WoW! Seems to me this blog have existed for ages, must mean I really appreciate being part of this "elite"!
And WHEN the Arctic becomes icefree?? We better hang around and find out!
Posted by: Christoffer Ladstein | June 07, 2011 at 18:02
What, Anna Kournikova follows Arctic Sea Ice?? ( well, she is from Russia :^)
Climate is 'weather over 30 years'. On the day Anna was born (7 June 1981), CT Area was 11,056,418 km^2.
Yesterday, Arctic SIA was 1,489,166 km^2 below that (-13.5%). Ironically, people her age probably think today's value is Normal.
The frog slowly boils...
Posted by: Artful Dodger | June 07, 2011 at 22:00
It was some three weeks after Neven started the blog I first saw it appear searching the web for ‘greenland’, ‘ice cap’ or ‘sea level’. It was immediately clear to me Neven had created a forum for interested people worldwide (though Anglophone). Having lost prudence near the end of july, I started taking part in the discussions. In contradiction to the sad story of AGW we witness, the blog gives me some constellation that I’m not alone. Following the blog, you all present me with joy, through funny remarks, irony, anger and a lot of witty work. I thank Neven for all of that and wish us followers the courage to speak out and help save any possible shred of a world that looks bound to be spoilt.
Posted by: Werther | June 07, 2011 at 22:46
As for irony, I’m compelled to bring some of that up myself, reading some suggestions about what we might better do on the latest PIOMASS roll. I imagine old Plato asking ‘who is we’ and he might have added to leave himself out of that group.
Better off moving inland? Who? The poor Africans trying to enter fortress Europe? Millions of poor Bengali’s?
Because climate change is happening now, though our politicians and media do anything not to acknowledge AGW.
There’s no hiding place for us.
As for the economy, he or she is going to ruin itself anyway, because as a system it’s not sustainable. It’s grounded on wrong expectations and values.
As for the ‘burp’, there isn’t going to be a ‘day after tomorrow’ yawn. It’s going to be a drag through the rest of our lifetime. And when you simply follow the available leads on this blog, you could know it has already started cooking in Siberia’s fens (and the submarine ‘of late’ permafrost).
So that leaves you. What are you going to do William? You could move ‘inland’ (please don’t take your computer with you and donate compassionately to the less fortunate).
Posted by: Werther | June 08, 2011 at 00:10
Unfortunately most of the impacts won't be felt in our life-time, it's my little boy's life-time (he is almost 4 now) that will bear much of the pain that we and earlier generation caused. This is part of the reason why "politicians and media do anything not to acknowledge AGW" - if there was a "clear and immediate threat" then we might see some concerted effort.
We can't stop Climate Change, but we can reduce it's impacts by reducing emissions.
Posted by: Account Deleted | June 08, 2011 at 01:13